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THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 

IDITED BY 

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

BY 

NORMAN HAPGOOD 




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DANIEL WEBSTER 



BY 



NORMAN HAPGOOD 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD ^ COMPANY 

MDCCCXCIX 



•Uj. 

Copyright^ i8gg 
By Small^ Maynard ^ Company 



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Entered at Stationers^ Hall 



i 






'r .V r^.r'- 



Press of 
George H. Ellis^ Boston 






1 



The photogravure used as a frontispiece 

♦ this volume is from a daguerreotype taken 

ipril 29 J 1850y by Josiah J. JECawes, Bos- 

^ m. The present engraving is by John 

Andrew & Son, Boston, 



} 



i* 



I 



PEEFACE. 

A very short biography ^ which aims to 
sketch the most important features of Daniel 
Webster^ s story for the general reader , pre- 
sumably aims paHicularly at presenting two 
aspects of his mind and character ^ one of 
which shows why he is so large a figure in 
a vital period of American history^ while 
the othet^ explains what kept his from being 
the greatest name on the records of the Neio 
World. The sources of information about 
his genius are sufficient and exact That 
story lies written in his works and in the 
history of his country, On the other handy 
he has been unfortunate in those of his biog- 
raphers who might have left a speaking 
nage of the man. Mr. Curtis, the author 
f the official life, has loyally blurred the 
portrait. Peter Harvey, in his little book 
of intimate impressions, shoivs his oton 
mind too small to reflect, without distortion, 
tfie features of his great friend. Mr. Lan- 
man, who has left some facts, was hardly 
an observer. Of course, the admirers of 



viii PREFACE 

every genius sigh over the absence of a Bos- 
well; hut probably feio need one more than 
Webster, The best short life of him, that 
written by Senator Lodge, makes a judi- 
cious use of the materials available. The 
solidest critical estimate is that of James 
Farton, The most famous attacks are 
those of Theodore Parker and Ealph 
Waldo Emerson, 

In this brief narrative the attempt is to 
name without elaboration the more difficult . 
and abstract accomplishments of Webster, 
in the realms of law, finance, and diplo- 
macy, and to give more fully the simpler 
and more popular feats, which happen in i 
this case to be the greatest and the most pro- 
foundly influential. In treating his per- 
sonal life and private traits, the desire hi\ vs i 
been to select what is reasonably beyond dii s- • 
pute, and wlmt at the same time is <Zii j- • 
tinctly causal in its relation to his publ ic 

history. I 

^ NORMAN HAPGOOi; 1. . 

New York, April 3, 1899. 



CHEONOLOGY. 

1782 
January 18. Daniel Webster was born at 
Salisbury, N.H. 

1794 
Spring, Entered Exeter Academy. 

1797 
Augmt Entered Dartmouth College. 

1800 
July 4. Delivered to the citizens of Han- 
over his first public oration. 

1801 
August Eeceived his degree. 
Winter, Was made schoolmaster at Frye- 
burg, Me. 

1804 
July 20. Went to Boston, and entered 
the law office of Christopher Gore. 

1805 
March, Admitted to the Boston bar. 

1806 
April. His father died. Daniel assumed 
his debts. Lived in Boscawen, ]!I.H. 



X CHRONOLOGY 

1807 
Autumn. Transferred his law business to 
his brother Ezekiel, and removed to 
Portsmouth, !N'.H. 

1808 
June 24. Married Miss Grace Fletcher, 
of Salisbury. Published a speech against 
the Embargo of 1807. 

1$12 
July 4. Addressed the Washington Be- 
nevolent Society at Portsmouth. 
August. Sent as a delegate to the Rock- 
ingham County Assembly, and wrote 
the ^ ' Rockingham Memorial. ' ' 
Fall. Elected to the Thirteenth Congress. 

1813 
May. Took his seat, and was placed on 
the Committee on Foreign Relations. 

1813-14 
Winter. Admitted to the bar of the Su- 
preme Court. 

1814 

January 14. Made a speech against ; "^x 
enlistment bill. / 






CHEONOLOGY xi 

1814 {continued) 
September, Returned to Washington for 
the extra session called. 

1816 
June. Eemoved to Boston from Ports- 
mouth. 

December. Called back to Boston from 
Washington by illness of his daughter 
Grace, who died. 

1817 
March 4:. The Fourteenth Congress was 
ended, and Webster temporarily retired 
from public life. 

September. First argument in the Dart- 
mouth College case in I^ew Hampshire. 

1818 
March 10. Final argument in the same 
case before the Supreme Court at Wash- 
ington. 

1820 
Summer & Fall. Assisted in revising the 
Constitution of Massachusetts. 
December 22. Delivered the Plymouth 
oration. 



xii CHRONOLOGY 

1822 
Nominated to Congress from Boston dis- 
trict. 

1823 

December. Took his seat in Washington. 

1824 
January 19. Delivered a speech in favor 
of appointing commissioner to Greece. 
March, Delivered a speech against the 
Tariff of 1824. 

December 18. His youngest son Charles 
died. 

1824-25 
Winter. Delivered speech on national 
Cumberland road. 

1825 

June 17. Delivered the first Bunker Hill 

oration. 

1826 

August 2. Eulogy on Adams and Jeffer- 
son. 

1827 

June. Accepted United States senator- 
ship from Massachusetts. 



CHEOXOLOGY xiii 

1828 
January 21. Mrs. Webster died. 
April. Delivered a speech for the benefit 
of surviving officers of the Ee volution. 
May. Delivered famous speech on the 
Tariff of 1828, and voted for the ^^Bill 
of Abominations. '' 

Mvember 12. Delivered an oration in 
Boston on ^^ Science in Connection with 
the Mechanic Arts.'^ 

1829 
December 12. Married Miss Caroline Le 
Boy, of IS'ew York. 

1830 
Janwary 20. First answer to Hayne. 
January 26. The second and famous 
^'Eeply to Hayne. '^ 

1833 
February 8. Supported the ' ' Force Bill ' ' 
in a noted speech. 

February 16. Eeplied to Calhoun^s nulli- 
ication argument with the able speech 
mown as ^^ The Constitution not a Com- 
pact between Sovereign States.'^ 



xiv CHRONOLOGY 

1833 {continued^ 
Summer. Made a tour through the West. 

1836 
Unsuccessful candidate for President, 
Massachusetts alone supporting him. 

1837 
March 15. Made a famous speech at 
Niblo's Garden. 
Summer, Made a second tour of the West. 

1839 
January. Ee-elected to the Senate. 
Summer. Went to England as a private 
citizen. 
December. Returned to America. J 

1841 

February 22. Resigned his seat in the 

Senate. 

March 4. Accepted Secretaryship of 

State. 

1841-42 

Winter. ^^Ashburton Treaty.^' ; 

1843 

3Iay. Resigned his Secretaryship, andj 

went to Marshfield for the summer. 



cheo:n^ology xv 

1843 
June 17. Second Bunker Hill oration. 

1844-45 
Winter. Again elected Senator from 
Massachusetts upon the resignation of 
Choate. 

1846 
February. Attacked by C. J. Ingersoll, 
of Philadelphia. 

April 6, 7. Speech on ^^Ashburton 
Treaty.'' 

1847 
Summer. Made a tour of Southern States. 

1848 
April 28. His daughter, Mrs. Appleton, 
died in Boston. 

May 3. Burial of his second son, Major 
Edward Webster, brought back from 
Mexico. 

September 1. Speech at Marshfield on the 
nomination of General Taylor. 

1850 
March!. Delivered the great ^^7th of 
March'' speech. 



xvi CHEONOLOGY 

1850 (continued) 
July 23. Accepted again the Secretary- 
sliip of State, and resigned his seat in 
the Senate. 

December 21. Rebuked Austria through 
the ^ ^ Hulseman Letter. ' ^ 

1852 
May. Thrown from his carriage near 
Marshfield, and seriously hurt. 
Summer. Again an unsuccessful candi- 
date for the Presidency. 
July. Came to Boston. 
August. Returned to Washington. 
September 8. Returned to Marshfield. 
October 24. Daniel Webster died. 
October 29. Plain but public funeral. 



i 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 

I. 

A BIOGRAPHY of the greatest Amer- 
ican orator is mainly the story of his 
developing genius and his unfolding 
character. His life contained few acci- 
dents. Up to the age of fifty we merely 
watch the expansion of his powers^ the 
mastery of law and politics, the victory 
over the ordinary obstacles of a progress 
from obscurity to fame, from a border 
farm to the tribunal on which he stood 
as the strongest defender of the Consti- 
tution and its liberties. Then, after 
the summit has been reached, we trace 
the barely perceptible decline, equally 
caused from within, on this descent, 
certain traits in the character gaining 
the ascendency over the healthy genius. 
The story is as significant as a high im- 
aginative drama, because it is a single 
and tremendous progress, the flowering 
and partial fading of a powerful soul, — 



2 DANIEL WEBSTER 

a rising in force like the tide, and then 
the gradual ebb until death. With its 
touch of sadness, it is nevertheless an 
inspiring and uplifting story, because 
the brilliant powers and priceless results 
stand out eternal, even where they were 
dimmed in the short space of a life. 
Probably no other modern orator has 
left so many words that live ; and, on 
the other hand, no other modern orator 
has moved more deeply listening bodies 
of men. His words last from their solid 
thought and chaste eloquence, even now 
that their work is accomplished. He 
lives not, like so many great orators, as 
a mere name, but in some of the most 
popular passages in his country's liter- 
ature. When the lines of the conflict 
were drawing, this majestic speaker 
pierced the issues to the heart, and gave 
to the truth the encouragement of 
moving explanation. The principles of 
union came to the reflective country lad 
from Hamilton, Adams, and Washing- 



DAKIEL WEBSTEE 3 

ton 5 they developed in the lawyer and 
statesman under the guidance of the 
great jurists, Marshall and Story; but 
I Webster alone could send them through 
the battle in words that blazed with 
truth and courage alike for the leaders 
and the people. The orator educated, 
warmed, and invigorated the nation; 
and the phrases of his speeches formed 
the rock on which his country stood in 
the hour of trial. If before the end his 
own heart grew faint, after his death a 
young nation fighting for truths new in 
the world was still sheltered by his 
words,— ^^ liberty and union, now and 
forever, one and inseparable.'^ 

The story of this life begins among the 
early Kew England hardships, in which 
the country first matured its strength. 
The Websters, of Scotch extraction, had 
been in America since about 1636 ; and 
Ebenezer, Daniel's father, had fought 
his way through the French Wars, and 
built, near the banks of the Merrimack in 



4 DAOTEL WEBSTEE 

the town of Salisbury^ New Hampshire, 
the first log cabin in the vicinity. When 
the war for independence broke out, 
Captain Webster left his farm and mill, 
rallied his neighbors, and fought with 
Washington to the end, — a strong man, 
trusted, fearless, tall and lithe, dark as 
an Indian, knowing little of books, but 
reading the best he could find by the 
light of the fire in his log cabin on 
winter nights. His second wife, Abigail 
Eastman, the mother of Daniel and his 
only whole brother, Ezekiel, was of 
Welsh extraction, and a thorough daugh- 
ter of New England, one of a race as 
sturdy as her husband's. Of the nine 
other sons and daughters of the two 
marriages, Ezekiel alone counted for 
much in the life of Daniel. 

When his youngest and most gifted 
son was born on Jan. 18, 1782, Ebenezer 
had left his cabin for a house. His 
mountain farm in New Hampshire stood 
within sight of the lofty peaks of Kear- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 5 

sarge and Washington, and one field 
contained a hundred acres of level 
meadow. Always increasing in the re- 
spect of his neighbors, he became in 
turn legislator and judge. His convic- 
tions were born of the conditions of his 
time. As the battle for free worship 
had been won, his Puritanism was broad 
and gentle ; and, as the battle for nation- 
ality was still raging, his Federalism, 
with its belief in every centralizing ten- 
dency of the newly adopted Constitution, 
was harsh and narrow. To him the 
French Eevolution was all wickedness, - 
and Thomas Jefferson an object to abhor. 
Once, when he believed himself dying, 
away from home, he insisted on being 
moved, saying that he ^^was born a 
Federalist and always lived a Federalist, ^ 
and would not die in any but a Federal- 
ist town." 

Daniel was born two years after Eze- 
kiel, who was called the most beautiful 
man of his time. His manners were dis- 



6 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

tinguished, and he was vigorous, indus- 
trious, and persevering. Daniel Mmself 
was slight and delicate, and his poor 
health and distaste for work allowed him 
to loaf and reflect. His demeanor was 
impressive, dignified, unusual ; and his 
costume is said to have been chosen 
always with a quick eye for the best 
effect. Although he rode to plough, 
curried horses, and tended the saw-mill, 
his instinct was to catch trout, shoot 
squirrels, and fight cocks. This story 
floats about the Salisbury neighborhood. 
Their father had given Zeke and Daniel 
directions to do a piece of work during 
his temporary absence ; but, on his re- 
turn, he found the labor unperformed, 
and with a frown questioned the boys. 
^^ What have you been doing, Ezekiel ! " 
^^ Nothing, sir." ^^Well, Daniel, what 
have you been doing*?" ^^ Helping 
Zeke, sir." 

At a log school-house half a mile from 
the Webster farm, and then at another, 



DAN^IEL WEBSTER 7 

over two miles away, Daniel picked up 
a slight amount of information. Master 
Tappan, the boy's teacher, was quoted 
thus in a Boston newspaper at about the 
time of Webster's death: ^^ Daniel was 
always the brightest boy in the school, 
and Ezekiel the next ; but Daniel was 
much quicker at his studies than his 
brother. He would learn more in five 
minutes than another boy in five hours. 
One Saturday, I remember, I held up a 
handsome new jack-knife to the scholars, 
and said the boy who would commit to 
memory the greatest number of verses in 
the Bible by Monday morning should 
have it. Many of the boys did well ; 
but, when it came to Daniel's turn to 
recite, I found that he had committed so 
much that, after hearing him repeat 
some sixty or seventy verses, I was 
obliged to give up, he telling me that 
there were several chapters yet that he 
had learned. Daniel got that jack- 
knife." The boy's real education was 



8 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

in his fatlier's saw- mill, where he read 
and reread a few good books as the logs 
passed through. At Salisbury where he 
spent most of his boyhood, three miles 
from his birthplace at Elms Farm, he 
paid to the village storekeeper, who was 
also his schoolmaster, the only twenty- 
five cents he possessed for a handkerchief 
with the Constitution of the United 
States printed upon it. He learned his- 
tory from an old British sailor in the 
vicinity, from men who had fought Ind- 
ians and women who had heard their 
midnight yell. Barefoot, dressed in his 
mother's homespun garments, he went 
about the country and recited poetry as 
he walked, so that the neighbors some- 
times stopped to listen. 

His own view of the value of being 
born in such a time at such a place was 
given many years later, when he spoke 
of the landing of the Pilgrims : ^ ^ The 
morning that beamed on the first night 
of their repose saw the Pilgrims already 



DANIEL WEBSTER 9 

at home in their country. There were 
political institutions and civil liberty and 
religious worship. Poetry has fancied 
nothing, in the wanderings of heroes, 
so distinct and characteristic. Here was 
man, indeed, unprotected, and unpro- 
vided for, on the shore of a rude and 
fearful wilderness ; but it was politic, 
intelligent, and educated man. Every- 
thing was civilized but the physical 
world. Institutions, containing in sub- 
stance all that ages had done for human 
government, were organized in a forest. 
Cultivated mind was to act on unculti- 
vated nature ; and, more than all, a 
government and a country were to com- 
mence, with the very first foundations 
made under the divine light of the 
.Christian religion. Happy auspices of 
a happy futurity ! Who would wish 
that his country's existence had other- 
wise begun? Who would desire the 
power of going back to the ages of 
fables ? Who would wish for an origin 



10 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

obscured in the darkness of antiquity'! 
Who would wish for other emblazoning 
of his country's heraldry or other orna- 
ments of her genealogy than to be able 
to say that her first existence was with 
intelligence^ her first breath the inspira- 
tion of liberty, her first principle the 
truth of divine religion ? ' ' 

As Daniel spent his boyhood contem- 
plating nature, listening to anecdotes 
and doctrine from men and women who 
had lived through the nation's birth, 
and, doubtless, silently practising the gift 
of statement as the logs went through the 
mill, what books he had became his inti- 
mates ; and he seldom walked without 
one. Pope's Essay on Man he knew en- 
tire, as he knew most of Watts' s hymns 
and much of the Bible. Sudibras, the 
Spectator y Pope's Homer, were among the 
earliest books ; and they were followed 
by Cicero, when he began to study Latin. 
Shakspere and Milton, who seemed to be 
woven into his thought at his greatest 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 11 

period, came later ; and he studied Sal- 
lust, Caesar, Homer, and Demosthenes, 
when he felt that he ought to know 
them. 

At this boyhood period he took life 
freely and jovially ; and, as he tells of 
himself, his sense of fun fed itself even 
on the misfortunes of others. His rollick- 
ing laugh has left its memory with num- 
bers who knew him. He took things 
lightly, never strained himself, and con- 
tentedly observed what was in the air 
about him. The mountains and the 
beasts of the farm and forest spoke to 
him, and he never forgot their meaning. 
He was already germinating that feeling 
for big things, for health and normal 
happiness, for the country in which he 
lived, on which he later built so large 
an argument. Some who noticed his idle 
love of play believed he would come to 
nothing, and the wittiest of his brothers 
said that Daniel needed a college edu- 
cation to make him equal to the rest. 



12 DANIEL WEBSTER 

Others, struck by his deep-set eyes, noble 
carriage, rich and flexible voice, quick 
memory, and alert interest, prophesied 
that the future would know of him. 
He was then tall, and so thin that he 
weighed but one hundred and twenty 
pounds ; but his look already promised 
something of the majestic weight of later 
years. 

Nothing could have more delighted 
the boy, fond of knowledge and thought, 
than the father's announcement that he 
was to go to college. Poorly prepared 
as he was in many ways, he had at least 
the habit of serious reflection and the 
power of quick acquisition ; and, after a 
few months at Phillips Exeter Academy 
and a little private instruction near 
home, he entered Dartmouth in 1797. 
He rapidly became known for profi- 
ciency in the things he liked, but never 
forced himself to disagreeable tasks. 
^^ When I was at school," he said forty 
years later, in an after-dinner speech, 



DAKIEL "WEBSTER 13 

^^ I felt exceedingly obliged to Homer's 
messengers for the exact literal fidelity 
with which they delivered their mes- 
sages. The seven or eight lines of good 
Homeric Greek in which they had re- 
ceived the commands of Agamemnon or 
Achilles they recited to whomsoever the 
message was to be carried ; and as they 
repeated them verbatim, sometimes twice 
or thrice, it saved me the trouble of 
learning so much Greek.'' His attitude 
toward mathematics was similar j but he 
read widely in history, literature, and a 
few Latin authors, conducted a local 
paper for a time to pay his board, and 
became known for his oratory. As, ac- 
cording to his own testimony, he was too 
shy to speak at Exeter, he must have 
gained confidence rapidly after mixing 
with many men. His maturer taste was 
so severe that he looked upon these 
college declamations without mercy, 
although, flamboyant as they were, they 
contained more fundamental thought 



14 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

and more vigorous language than is 
usual in the Junior year. ^ ^ While 
in college/' he tells us, ^^I delivered 
two or three occasional addresses, which 
were published. I trust they are for- 
gotten. They were in very bad taste. 
I had not then learned that all true 
power in writing is in the idea, not in 
the style." 

As the first experiments of a great 
I orator interest the world, one of the most 
J lurid passages in his Junior Fourth of 
July oration has become rather widely 
known. ^ ^ Columbia, " he cried, ^^ stoops 
not to tyrants. Her spirit will never 
cringe to France. Neither a supercilious 
five-headed directory nor the gasconad- 
ing pilgrim of Egypt will ever dictate 
terms to sovereign America ! The thun- 
der of our cannon shall insure the per- 
formance of our treaties and fulminate 
destruction on Frenchmen till the ocean 
is crimsoned with blood and gorged with 
pirates. '^ What is much more remark- 



BAKIEL WEBSTER l5 

able is that the boy of eighteen could 
also write like this: ^^No sooner was 
peace restored with England (the first 
grand article of which was the acknowl- 
edgment of our independence) than the 
old system of Confederation, dictated at 
first by necessity and adopted for the 
purposes of the moment, was found in- 
adequate to the government of an exten- 
sive empire. Under a full conviction of 
this we then saw the people of these 
States engaged in a transaction which is 
undoubtedly the greatest approximation 
towards human perfection the political 
world had ever yet witnessed, and 
which, perhaps, will forever stand in 
the history of mankind without a par- 
allel. A great republic composed of 
different States, whose interest in all re- 
spects could not be perfectly compatible, 
then came deliberately forward, dis- 
carded one system of government and 
adopted another without the loss of one 
man's blood." In verse also, which was 



/ 



16 DANIEL WEBSTER 

commonplace enough, he suggested the 
woes of war, and advised his country to 
give thanks for peace. 

At Daniel's instigation, during his 
Junior year his parents, already bur- 
dened with a mortgaged farm, decided 
to send Ezekiel also to Dartmouth, and 
trust the boys for future help. Daniel, 
royally as he expected and demanded 
much from others, was grateful and 
sympathetic ; and he made part of the 
sacrifice required for his brother's edu- 
cation at college, which began in the 
year of Daniel's graduation with the 
class of 1801. After this event he en- 
tered a country law office near home, 
but soon left it, in fulfilment of his 
promise to help in Ezekiel' s support, 
and went off to the village of Fryeburg 
in Maine to teach school by day and 
copy deeds by night. In a few months 
he was able to return to Salisbury and 
continue reading law, choosing books of 
general legal philosophy, like Montes- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 17 

quieu and Blackstone, or of history, 
.like Hume and Eobertson, and formu- 
lating later a doctrine that it was use- 
less to attack such an abstract person as 
Coke until the path had first been made 
easy by some one as attractive as Espi- 
nasse. He preferred to travel by pleas- 
ant paths, but he travelled far. 

His poverty did not weigh upon him. 
While he was teaching school and copy- 
ing deeds, he wrote thus to one of his 
friends: ^^You will naturally inquire 
how I prosper in the article of cash. 
Finely ! finely ! I came here in January 
with a horse, watch, etc., and a few ras- 
cally counters in my pocket. Was soon 
obliged to sell my horse, and live on the 
proceeds. Still straightened for cash, I 
sold my watch and made a shift to get 
home, where my friends supplied me 
with another horse and another watch. 
My horse is sold again; and my watch 
goes, I expect, this week. Thus you see 
how I lay up cash." To another friend. 



18 DANIEL WEBSTER 

however, he suggests that he did deny 
himself some pleasures from economy.^,] 
^^ Perhaps/' he wrote, ^^you thought, as 
I did, that a dozen dollars would slide 
out of the pocket in a Commencement ^ 
jaunt much easier than they would slide 
in again after you got home. That was 
the exact reason why I was not there. ,^^| 
... I flatter myself that none of my 
friends ever thought me greatly ab- 
sorbed in the sin of avarice ; yet I as- 
sure you, Jem, that in these days of 
poverty I look upon a round dollar with 
a great deal of complacency. Theseii 
rascal dollars are so necessary to the 
comfort of life that, next to a fine wife, ^ 
they are most essential, and their acqui- 
sition an object of prime importance. 
O Bingham, how blessed it would be^ 
to retire with a decent, clever bag of 
Eixes to a pleasant country town, and 
follow one's own inclination without 
being shackled by the duties of a pro- 
fession !" 



DANIEL WEBSTEB 19 

In 1804 he left his native 'New Hamp- 
5hire town, and entered the office of 
Christopher Gore, a scholarly lawyer 
and statesman of Boston, soon to be 
shosen governor of Massachusetts. Under 
tiis guidance Webster read wisely and 
tnuch. A glimpse into the young man's 
iemocratic feelings, which never left 
bim, is given in this extract from a letter 
of that year: '^Jerome, the brother of 
bhe emperor of the Gauls, is here. Every 
lay you may see him whisking along 
Oornhill, with the true French air, with 
|iis wife by his side. The lads say that 
jhey intend to prevail on American 
nisses to receive company in future 
ifter the manner of Jerome's wife ; that 
Is, in bed. The gentlemen of Boston 
[i,e.^ we Feds) treat Monsieur with cold 
md distant respect. They feel, and 
fvery honest man feels, indignant at 
eeing this lordly grasshopper, this pup- 
pet in prince's clothes, dashing through 
he American cities, luxuriously rioting 



20 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

on the property of Dutch mechanics or 
Swiss peasants." While he was quietly 
reading law and observing men, a hard ,, 
problem suddenly crossed his path. To I 
lighten the pecuniary hardships of Eben- 1 
ezer Webster, who had served since 1791 
as judge in a local court, his associates, i' 
near the end of 1804, offered to the oh I 
man for Daniel the office of clerk of 
court, with a salary large enough to 
raise the whole family to comfort. Danieli 
went to Mr. Gore, radiant with his fort- ' 
une. Hard-headed Mr. Grore coldly 
told him he was not made to be a clerk. 
Daniel started home at once to break thf (j 
news of his declination to his parent^|. 
His father was aghast. That his son 
should sacrifice the ease of all his kin to 
vague prospects of future greatness left^ 
him almost dumb. ^^Well, my son," 
he exclaimed, ^ ^ your mother has always 
said that you would come to something; 
or nothing. She was not sure which. Ti 
think you are now about settling thai 



DANIEL WEBSTER 21 

doubt for her." He never mentioned 
tihe subject again. 

The next year Daniel, after his admis- 
sion to the Boston bar, came to Boscawen, 
near Salisbury; for his father's end was 
evidently near. When the brave old 
man died, Daniel, in 1807, turned over 
'ais practice to Zeke, and went to Ports- 
mouth, a flourishing town, where his 
talents brought him rapidly in contact 
>with some of the best legal minds of the 
country, especially with Jeremiah Mason, 
who used to win all his cases, — a gigantic 
body, with a mind so penetrating and 
firm that Mr. Webster said in later years 
that not even Marshall surpassed Mason 
in original power, however superior the 
great chief justice might be in training. 
Mr. Webster tells us that Mason's success 
with juries first taught him to drop all 
high-sounding phrases and talk in simple 
iianguage straight at the minds before 
him. The trend of his own taste was 
already strong in that direction, but he 



22 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

learned from Mason as lie learned fro 
every strong man he met. 

The young man's strides upward, botl 
in law and in oratory, were very rapidj] 
His appearance at this stage — the loo^ 
and bearing which were always his,, 
powerful allies — is described by a num- 
ber of keen witnesses: ^^When Mr, 
Webster began to speak, his voice was 
low, his head was sunk upon his breast, 
his eyes were fixed upon the floor, and 
he moved his feet incessantly, backward 
and forward, as if trying to secure a 
firmer position. His voice soon in- 
creased in power and volume till it 
filled the whole house. His attitude' 
became erect, his eyes dilated, and his 
whole countenance was radiant with 
emotion. ' ' 

^^He was a black, raven-haired fel- 
low, with an eye as black as death, and 
as heavy as a lion's,— and no lion in^ 
Africa ever had a voice like him ; and 
his look was like a lion's,— that same 



DANIEL WEBSTER 23 

heavy look, not sleepy, but as if he 
Hlidn't care about anything that was 
going on about him or anything any- 
where else. He didn't look as if he was 
thinking about anjrthing, but as if he 
would think like a hurricane if he once 
Igot waked up to it. They say the lion 
!"Ooks so when he is quiet. It wasn't an 
empty look, this of Webster's, but one 
that didn't seem to see anything going 
on worth his while." 

This last is not unlike the impression 
which Thomas Oarlyle got of him years 
after : — 

^^Not many days ago I saw at break- 
fast the notablest of all your notabilities, 
Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent 
jpecimen. You might say to all the 
World, ^ This is our Yankee Englishman, 
>uch limbs we make in Yankee land ! ' 
As a logic fencer, or parliamentary Her- 
3ules, one would be inclined to back 
'lim at first sight against all the extant 
i^orld. The tanned complexion, that 



24 DAOTEL WEBSTEE 

amorphous crag-like face, the dull blacks 
eyes under the precipice of brows, likap 
dull anthracite furnaces, needing only 
to be hloion, the mastiff mouth accu- 
rately closed, — I have not traced so mucht 
of silent BerserJcir rage that I remember 
in any man.'' An old friend of his 
father's on meeting the son once re^^' 
marked ; ^^n the war we could not tell 
whether Captain Webster's face was a 
natural color or blackened by powder. 
You must be his son, for you are a 
cursed sight blacker than he was ! " A 
navvy in the streets of Liverpool, point- 
ing to Mr. Webster, exclaimed, ^^ There, 
goes a king!" James Russell Lowell 
says that President Tyler in his carriage ! 
with Webster looked like a swallow 
against a thunder- cloud, and Sydney 
Smith called him a cathedral. 

His look, his voice, his brain, which f 
played easily with large subjects, ab- 
sorbed rapidly, and seized the best in 
the minds about him, brought him a 






DANIEL WEBSTER 25 

success which soon carried him to a still 
larger field. His marriage in May of 
1808 to Grace Fletcher was a strength- 
ening influence in his life ; for she was 
a woman of good mind and strong and 
pure character. His first interference 
in public matters was also in 1808, when 
he wrote a pamphlet, which was widely- 
read, against the embargo of the pre- 
ceding year. Four years later, after 
keeping away from politics in the mean 
time, he delivered a Fourth of July ad- 
dress, in which he spoke for a larger 
navy, in the spirit of Washington, elo- 
quently pictured the importance of com- 
merce, and attacked France for trying 
to trick us into a war with England, 
the result being that he was made a del- 
egate to a convention held in August 
of 1812, by the people of Rockingham 
County, to oppose the war. On this oc- 
casion he wrote, as the report of a com- 
mittee, the ^^ Rockingham Memorial,'' a 
work with which he was pleased even at 



26 DANIEL WEBSTER 

the height of his powers, and which so 
clearly expressed the Federalist views in 
favor of peace that the author of it was 
sent by his party to the Thirteenth Con- 
gress. Here he took his seat in May, 
1813. 



II. 

So soon as Webster set foot in the 
House of Representatives, he began to 
make himself felt by striking at the 
weakest points in the administration 
policy. His reputation at thirty-one 
was already so high, through his legal 
career, his occasional addresses, and his 
^^ Rockingham Memorial," that on his 
entrance the Speaker, Henry Clay, im- 
mediately put him on the Committee of 
Foreign Relations, the most important 
of all the committees in time of war, 
then having at its head John C. Cal- 
houn. Mr. Webster's first resolution 
called upon the administration for infor- 
mation regarding the publication in the 
United States of Napoleon's repeal of 
the French decrees against American 
shipping. Of course, the object of this 
resolution was to show that those de- 
crees had never been repealed, and that 
France, for its own benefit, was tricking 



28 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

the United States into war with Great 
Britain. By this first resolution Web- 
ster showed not only his lasting faculty 
of letting side issues alone and striking 
hard at the centre, but also his strict 
Federalism. The Federalists were op- 
posed to the war ; and, although the two 
Adamses deserted the party because 
they felt the strength of the national 
spirit, Daniel Webster stood almost as 
rigid a Federalist as his father. He was 
not extreme, however, in the measures 
he advocated ; for he had already too 
much moderation and too much breadth 
to approach as near the edge of dan- 
gerous opposition in war-time as other 
Federalists ventured. He really con- 
tented himself with attacking those 
government measures which might still 
be wisely changed. He continued his 
opposition to the destructive embargo, 
which Calhoun himself, spokesman of 
the administration, soon had to aban- 
don to repeal. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 29 

In this first session Mr. Webster un- 
furled many of the banners which were 
to be his standards through the more 
glorious part of his career. He showed 
at once that on constitutional interpreta- 
tion he stood for strictness in upholding 
the defensive features of the national 
government as well as for liberality in 
construing its powers. He believed that 
a tariff for protection was unconstitu- 
tional, but he also believed that the 
government had a free hand in internal 
improvements. Whatever he touched 
he made alive, for in his clear vision the 
legal framework of an argument was 
always covered with living truth. ^^I 
am not anxious," he said, in opposing 
the tariff, 'Ho accelerate the approach 
of the period when the great mass of 
American labor shall not find its em- 
ployment in the field j when the young 
men of the country shall be obliged to 
shut their eyes upon external nature, 
upon the heavens and the earth, and 



30 DAKIEL WEBSTEE 

immure themselves in close, unwhole- 
some workshops ; when they shall be 
obliged to shut their ears to the bleat- 
ings of their own flocks upon their own 
hills, and to the voice of the lark that 
cheers them at the plough, — that they 
may open them in dust and smoke and 
steam to the perpetual whirl of spools 
and spindles and the grating of rasps 
and saws ! ' ' He spoke for individual 
liberty against President Monroe's con- 
scription, an Enlistment Bill calling 
for a forced draft ; and in April, 1816, 
he introduced a resolution which re- 
vealed a position in favor of sound 
finance from which he never wavered, — 
a resolution that all payments to the 
national treasury must be made in 
specie or its equivalent. There were 
then three parties on the question of a 
national bank : one opposed any bank ; 
another, led by Calhoun, favored a 
paper-money institution ; and the third, 
in which Webster was the strongest fig- 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 31 

ure, was for a bank on a specie basis. 
When the paper- money institution had 
been defeated, Calhoun came to Webster, 
and with tears in his eyes begged him to 
allow the government a bank on his own 
terms ; and the sound- money contest was 
won. 

One incident of this session shows the 
young orator in the full possession of 
that independent dignity which was so 
impressive a feature of his best years. 
That irritable little man, John Ean- 
dolph, of Eoanoke, provoked by one of 
his speeches, sent a challenge. He re- 
ceived in reply from his formidable 
looking opponent a brief note, of which 
the last half read : — 

^'It is enough that I do not feel my- 
self bound, at all times and under any 
circumstances, to accept from any man 
who chooses to risk his own life an invi- 
tation of this sort ; although I shall be 
always prepared to repel in a suitable 



32 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

manner the aggression of any man who 
may presume upon such a refusal. 

^ ^ Your obedient servant, 

^^ Daniel Webster. ^^ 

A growing law practice brought him 
from Portsmouth to Boston in 1816 ; and 
the need of money caused him to devote 
himself to it, and retire from public life 
in 1817, at the end of his second term. 
Then it was that within a few years he 
completed the imposing structure of his 
legal fame. Of the three departments 
of his reputation, oratory of course is 
first, and probably statesmanship is next j 
but, nevertheless, few lawyers, in the 
history of our country, have stood so 
high in the profession. On his retire- 
ment from Congress to devote himself to 
practice, Mr. Webster's position already 
brought him the best cases, so that he 
constantly faced the foremost lawyers, 
from the head of the bar, William Pink- 
ney, of Maryland, down j but powerful 



DANIEL WEBSTER 33 

arguments in conspicuous cases now rap- 
idly extended his fame. Among the first 
was a criminal mystery, in which Mr. 
Webster's shrewd and daring surmises 
into motives, his eloquent defence of 
those surmises, and, above all, his cross- 
examination, in which keen vision into 
the human mind, a manner to inspire 
awe and fright, and the tact to strike 
always at the weakest place were evenly 
combined, led a jury to believe that the 
prosecutor, Goodridge, had, for some un- 
known reason, robbed himself, wounded 
his own arm with a bullet, and then 
endeavored to cast the odium on the 
defendants. Goodridge, threatened with 
an action for malicious prosecution, fled. 
Twenty years later, when Webster was 
travelling, he asked for a drink at a 
tavern. The hand which held the glass 
shook like a leaf. Mr. Webster took it, 
and left without a word. The man was 
Goodridge. From this case, in April, 
1817, to what is his greatest effort in the 



34 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

criminal law, the prosecution of the- 
murderer of Captain White thirteen i| 
years after, he made some of the strong- ' 
est jury arguments on record. The 
White trial was the first occasion on 
which Mr. Webster pleaded against a 
man's life, and the opening pages of that 
argument are probably as nearly perfect 
a specimen of moving and simple elo- 
quence as can be found in the records of 
the law. Few bits in American prose 
can stand comparison with this for dra- 
matic vividness combined with the 
severest taste and the most convincing 
thought. ) 

Mr. Webster has done much for the" 
American school-boy, and that impor- 
tant creature loves to declaim these ter- 
rible sentences almost as keenly as he " 
delights in the ^^ Venerable Men'' of ^j 
the first Bunker Hill oration. But in 
this bit, as in Mr. Webster's other 
highest flights, the school-boy shares his 
rapture with the lawyer, the scholar, 



DANIEL WEBSTER 35 

7and the man of taste. The qualities are 
► not only striking, they are universal. 
From the opening words, — telling why 
the orator has consented for the first 
time in his life to plead for the death 
! of a fellow-being, through the picture in 
fthe moonlight of the midnight murder 
[and its hire and salary motives, through 
the words which tell how conscience 
struggles hardest to betray the victim 
when the deadly net of circumstance is 
binding itself about him, down to the 
final burst about suicide and confession, 
- this is surely a masterpiece of human 
Speech ; and when we imagine how the 
orator must have stood, with his blazing 
eyes, and black, enormous head, giving 
forth his sentences in a voice that could 
bring tears and start terror, even had its 
words meant nothing, — it is not wonder- 
ful to read of the fright and complete 
surrender of the men who sat facing the 
speaker in the jury-box. 

Mr. Webster understood the workings 



36 DANIEL WEBSTER 

of the average mind. At this higM 
period of his genius, he swept like an) 
eagle upon the realities of his case, hold- 
ing up the central facts as seen from the 
simi)le human standpoint, as visibly to^ 
the plain juryman as to the Supreme' 
Court of the land ; and his best jury' 
speeches, therefore, have a force and 
beauty not surpassed by his ablest con- 
stitutional arguments. In one quality, 
indeed, the jury work stands higher. It 
is more original. He selected his law 
from the fullest men about him, so sort- 
ing and marshalling their thoughts as^ 
to give them victory ; but this power ( f 
statement, which gave his constitutional" 
arguments their greatest virtue, sprung | 
in the jury cases direct from his own ' 
vision of the facts, with no aid from 
more scholaily minds. He was always^ 
fair, never shirked or obscured the issues, 
and won the jury almost as much by his" 
candor and justice as by his bearing, 
eloquence, and coherent argument. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 37 

It is because they are on more impor- 
tant topics that his leading Supreme 
Court arguments stand even higher. 
Mr. Webster himself believed, at least 
in some expressive moods, that the best 
of all his work was in the Dartmouth 
College case, 1818, and in Gibbons v. 
Ogden, 1824. The college case owes its 
immense importance to the fact that the 
point on which it finally rested settled 
the relations of the States to the national 
Constitution. No State legislature, it 
was contended and decided, had the con- 
stitutional right to interfere in the affairs 
of an institution like Dartmouth College, 
established by private persons for spe- 
cial pui'poses. Mr. Webster claimed no 
credit for the analysis of this case, but 
freely admitted his indebtedness to the 
able lawyers who prepared it, whose 
conclusions he merely fortified and ex- 
pounded. But his arrangement and his 
exposition, in all probability, decided 
the issue, and led the Supreme Court to 



38 DANIEL WEBSTER 

lay down, against the previous convic- 
tion of the majority, one of the most far- 
reaching principles of our government. 
When Mr. Webster argued the case at 
Exeter, he left the ]^ew Hampshire 
judges in tears ; but they decided against ' 
him, and he learned much from their 
opinions. The most intelligent witness 
who has recorded what happened when 
the case went to the Supreme Court, was 
prejudiced by what he had heard of the 
result in :N"ew Hampshire, as he was no 
believer in pathos as a factor in legal 
argument. This observer saw Justice 
Story prepare pencil and paper for notes 
against the orator's position. He saw 
that justice sit through the argument 
without lifting his pencil. Afterward 
Justice Story explained that there was 
nothing to write, the whole train of J 
thought being unfolded with such sim- ^ 
plicity and sequence that no one could - 
forget it. The court-room was full of 
women, as it frequently was when Mr. 



i 



DANIEL WEBSTER 39 

Webster spoke even on questions which 
they could not understand. They came 
to hear those appeals to conscience and 
feeling, which every now and then re- 
lieved the technical discussion, and to 
listen to the voice and keep their eyes 
on the commanding presence. At the 
end of this argument, Marshall, the 
greatest legal mind in the history of our 
country, was leaning forward, ^^ with his 
tall and gaunt figure bent over as if to 
catch the slightest whisper, the deep 
furrows of his cheek expanded with 
emotion, and his eyes suffused with 
tears." Mr. Webster had finished the 
theory of his case. He had explained 
the authority of the Constitution and the 

('dangers that might arise from allowing 
any State laws to infringe it. He now 
turned toward the chief justice. ^^Sir, 
tyou may destroy this little institution. 
^ It is weak. It is in your hands. I know 
it is one of the lesser lights in the literary 
horizon of our country. You may put 



40 DAl^IEL WEBSTER 

it out. But, if you do, you must carryi 
out your work. You must extinguish/ 
one after another, all those greater light 
of science which, for more than a cen 
tury, have thrown their radiance oven 
our land. It is, sir, as I have said, a 
small college. And yet there are those 
who love if 

Here the orator himself broke down.. 
His voice failed. He could not go on. . 
When he recovered, and ended in a few. 
words of almost equal power, he hadl 
completed an argument in which grasps 
of his subject, persuasive distinctness off 
thought, and adroit appeal to the preju- " 
dices of the great lawyers on the bench - 
were so mingled that in this end the 
far-reaching doctrine of our government 
was established. Mr. Pinkney, the lead- 
ing lawyer in the land, believed the I 
case was won more by eloquence than^ 
by law. 

Other cases followed, confirming the 
reputation already made. One of them 



i 



DANIEL WEBSTER 41 

should be mentioned for an anecdote 
connected with it which lights up the 
nature of Mr. Webster's legal thought. 
In what is know as the Ehode Island 
case, a young attorney named Bosworth 
was sent to explain the facts and the 
conclusions reached by the lawyers who 
had prepared the case. Mr. Webster 
listened to the explanation, and felt that 
something was wanting. ' ^ Is that all ? " 
he asked. The young attorney then 
modestly offered a theory of his own, 
which his superiors had rejected. ^^Mr. 
Bosworth,'' exclaimed Webster, ^^by 
the blood of all the Bosworths who fell 
on Bosworth field, that is the point of 
the case." That, in the law as in poli- 
tics, was the nature of his mind. With 
judgment and tact he listened to what 
others contributed, and then he picked 
out the point and brought all his powers 
to bear on that. Hence the success of 
that fairness to opponents, which made 
Mm state their arguments better than 



42 DAl^IEL WEBSTER 

they had been able to formulate them 
for themselves. He coiild afford to give 
the opposition a powerful statement ; for 
he relied on no trick or subtlety, but on 
the clear presentation of deep-seated 
truths. This distinct vision far into the 
life of the great themes which he was 
called upon to treat is the highest qual- 
ity of his mind, and it was in control 
of an eloquence which had become as 
pure as it was magnificent. 

^^When I was a young man," once 
said Mr. Webster, ^^and first entered 
the law, my style of oratory was as 
roimd and florid as Choat^'s. I do not 
think it is the best. It is not according 
to my taste." That taste, once acquired, 
almost never left him, — never, perhaps, 
before that turn in his life which made 
him the defender of errors which he 
had done so much to expose, and then 
but seldom. At this high noon of his 
gifts and character he planted himself 
firmly on great general principles, rely- 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 43 

ing almost wholly on a well - stored 
memory for what support they needed. 
Occasional bursts of grandeur, always 
timed with judgment, and alluring di- 
gressions to refresh the attention, chosen 
with the same instinct, relieve the steady 
march of his exposition. When he was 
a law student in Boston, he gave his best 
analysis to the characters of men and 
the methods of successful lawyers ; and 
at the height of his fame it was in the 
knowledge of the human mind and heart 
that he most excelled. 

The years in which these law cases 
were being argued also saw the delivery 
of the memorial addresses on which so 
much of their author's renown is built. 
The first — and, in the orator's own opin- 
ion, the best — was made at Plymouth 
in 1820, to commemorate the landing 
of the Pilgrims. John Adams, who lis- 
tened to the oration and who had heard 
Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, wrote to 
Mr, Webster that Burke was no longer 



44 DANIEL WEBSTER 

entitled to be called the most consum- 
mate orator of modern times. ^'This 
oration/' he said, ^^will be read five 
hundred years hence with as much rapt- 
ure as it was heard. It ought to be 
read at the end of every century, and 
indeed at the end of every year, forever 
and ever.'' And he also said, ^^ If there 
be an American who can read it without 
tears, I am not that American. ' ' 

The subject gave Mr. Webster an op- 
portunity to put into an eloquent pop- 
ular form, which should move a large 
gathering, those principles of American 
nationality which were the basis of his 
thought as a statesman and as an orator. 
The orator's power of voice and presence 
did much, of course, to melt and thrill 
the audience before him ; but the imme- 
diate effect was so nearly equalled by the 
lasting influence that Adams's prophecy 
has been a fair statement of the truth. 
One passage above all probably worked 
more potently on after events than any 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 45 

other single burst of indignation against 
the traffic in slaves : — 

^^In the sight of our law the African 

^slave-trader is a pirate and a felon ; and, 
in the sight of Heaven, an offender far 
beyond the ordinary depth of human 
guilt. There is no brighter page of our 

, history than that which records the 
measures which have been adopted by 

'the government at an early day, and at 
different times since, for the suppression 
of this traffic ; and I would call on all 
the true sons of New England to co- 
operate with the laws of man and the 
justice of Heaven. If there be, within 
the extent of our knowledge or influ- 
ence, any participation in this traffic, let 
us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock 
of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy 
it. It is not fit that the land of the Pil- 
grims should bear the shame longer. I 
hear the sound of the hammer, I see the 
smoke of the furnaces where manacles 
and fetters are still forged for human 



46 DANIEL WEBSTER 

limbs. I see the visages of those who by 
stealth and at midnight labor in this; 
work of hell, foul and dark, as may be- 
come the artificers of such instruments^ 
of misery and torture. Let that spot be 
purified, or let it cease to be of New 
England. Let it be purified, or let itt 
be set aside from the Christian world. 
Let it be put out of the circle of human 
sympathies and human regards, and let' 
civilized man henceforth have no com- 
munion with it. ' ' 

Years after, when he was forced to 
explain them away, those sentences met 
Mr. Webster at every turn. With it 
went hand in hand this other passage 
from the same oration : — 

^'Conscience, in the cause of religion i 
and the worship of the Deity, prepares 
the mind to act and to suffer beyond 
almost all other causes. It sometimes > 
gives an impulse so irresistible that no i! 
fetters of power or of opinion can with-^, 
stand it. History instructs us that this 



DANIEL WEBSTER 47 

love of religious liberty, a compound 
sentiment in the breast of man, made up 
of the clearest sense of right and the 
highest conviction of duty, is able to 
look the sternest despotism in the face, 
and, with means apparently most in- 
adequate, to shake principalities and 
powers. There is a boldness, a spirit of 
daring, in religious reformers not to be 
measured by the general rules which 
control men's purposes and actions. If 
the hand of power be laid upon it, this 
only seems to augment its force and its 
elasticity, and to cause its action to be 
more formidable and violent. Human 
invention has devised nothing, human 
power has compassed nothing, that can 
forcibly restrain it, when it breaks forth. 
Nothing can stop it but to give way to 
it : nothing can check it but indul- 
gence. It loses its power only when it 
has gained its object. The principle of 
toleration, to which the world has come 
so slowly, is at once the most just and 



48 DAl^riEL WEBSTER 

the most wise of all principles. Even 
when religious feeling takes a character 
of extravagance and enthusiasm, and 
seems to threaten the order of society 
and shake the columns of the social edi- 
fice, its principal danger is in its re- 
straint. If it be allowed indulgence and 
expansion, like the elemental fires, it 
only agitates, and, perhaps, purifies the 
atmosphere ; while its efforts to throw 
off restraint would burst the world 
asunder. ' ^ 

One of the most brilliant prophecies 
in history was made in this oration, and 
of no part of it did Mr. Webster him- 
self seem more proud. It was when, 
explaining what influence subdivision 
of property had on government, he met 
the apparent exception of France by de- 
claring that, ^ ^ if the government do not 
change the law, the law in half a cen- 
tury will change the government ; and 
that this change will be, not in favor of 
the power of the crown, as some Euro- 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 49 

pean writers have supposed, but against 
it.^^ In these great popular orations 
such clear perception as this is scattered 
throughout. One sober passage, answer- 
ing the objection that American society 
furnishes no class of men of fortune and 
leisure, boldly declares that the promo- 
tion of taste and literature are not pri- 
mary objects of political institutions. 

The second in time among the re- 
nowned memorial addresses was deliv- 
ered in 1825, to commemorate the battle 
of Bunker Hill. Standing on a platform 
at the foot of the hill on which the vic- 
tory was won, Mr. Webster addressed a 
multitude rising on the slopes above 
him. It was an occasion which appealed 
intensely to the orator's imagination, 
and his mind dwelt on it for some time 
before the day. The address to the 
soldiers, beginning, ^^ Venerable men,'' 
gave him little trouble ; for, as he said, 
he had lived in times that taught him 
how to appeal to men like them. What 



50 DANIEL WEBSTER 

caused him anxiety was the opening and 
the address to LaFayette. Any one 
looking over the speech, and seeing the 
differing tones in which each part of the 
audience is addressed, will be reminded 
of the solidity with which the speaker 
studied his audience. The crowd wept 
and cheered ; but two passages, above all 
the rest, brought intense emotion. One 
was the often quoted tribute to the vet- 
erans : the other, that final touch of 
beauty in the reasons for the monument. 
This, like all of Mr. \Yebster's effects, 
loses by standing alone ; for even to the 
reader he has, to a peculiar degree, the 
power of accumulation, of stirring the 
emotions gradually to the point where, 
rising to a warmer glow, he starts the 
tears or touches off the accumulated en- 
thusiasm. Nevertheless, a few lines may 
stand here to mark the first point at 
which the great assembly was carried 
away by the orator : ^' We wish, finally, 
that the last object to the sight of him 



DANIEL WEBSTER 51 

who leaves his native shore, and the first 
to gladden him who revisits it, may be 
something which shall remind him of the 
liberty and glory of his country. Let it 
rise ! Let it rise, till it meet the sun in 
his coming ! Let the earliest light of the 
morning gild it, and parting day linger 
and play on its summit ! ' ' 

This oration, in Mr. Webster's opinion, 
expressed just before its delivery, was 
a failure, — a kind of soft thaw, like the 
weather in which it was composed ; and 
he continued to prefer the earlier effort. 
Like his other speeches celebrating occa- / 
sions, and unlike his arguments in the 
Senate and in the couils of law, it is less 
a logical than an emotional whole. It 
is a series of subjects strung together 
loosely, but so handled as to give hearers 
of every sort the keen glow of pathetic 
fervor. Two anecdotes about the com- 
position of this address illustrate Mr. 
Webster's habit of thought. Devoted 
to country life, even to the very last, he 



52 DAKIEL \yEBSTER 

composed some of his most renowned out- 
bursts standing in brooks with rod in 
hand. His son Fletcher, approaching 
from behind, saw his father, holding the 
gun in his left hand, step impressively 
forward, raise his right hand, and break 
out with ^'Venerable men!" Another 
tale recounts that the address to La- 
Fayette had a similar origin. After 
long hours of empty fishing in his yacht, 
the orator landed a prize; and, as it 
dangled in the air, he cried, ' ^ Welcome ! 
all hail ! and thrice welcome, citizen of 
two hemispheres ! " In their manner of 
birth also, these patriotic orations dif- 
fered from the argumentatic speeches. 
Here he studied the language at the 
centres of effect ; but, in such master- 
pieces as the reply to Hayne, he jotted 
down a few topics, and trusted to the 
moment for the words. The result is not 
accurately to be decided, for Mr. Web- 
ster corrected a good deal. The glowing 
end of the great reply has been quieted, 



DANIEL AYEBSTER 53 

the melting appeals to sentiment in the 
Dartmouth College case have been 
elided, and his general practice was to 
go over every speech and argument to 
soften the passages brought out by the 
moment in a blaze too bright for his 
classic taste. There is a tale that on the 
morning following the Adams and Jeffer- 
son eulogy he threw the manuscript to 
a student with the request, '''- Please take 
that discourse, and cut out all the Latin 
words." 

This tribute to Adams and Jefferson, 
which came a year after the Bunker Hill 
oration, left Mr. Webster's renown as 
a memorial speaker as high as it ever 
rose. There were famous speeches later, 
such as the second Bunker Hill, June 17, > 
1843, and the Character of Washington, 
February 22, 1832 ; but none of them 
carried his reputation higher. In this 
tribute the best-known bit is the imagi- 
nary speech, ^^Sink or swim, live or die, 
survive or perish, I give my hand and 



54 DANIEL WEBSTER 

my heart to this vote," put into the' 
mouth of John Adams in favor of de- 
claring independence. Nothing in all 
his writings shows more clearly his his- 
torical imagination, the vividness with 
, which he saw past scenes, became alive 
with their spirit, and filled himself with 
the souls of other men. He ended this 
speech in the early morning, and the 
page was wet with tears. This confes- 
sion, made by him later to President 
Fillmore, is the most direct testimony 
we have to his mood in composition ; 
but without it we could guess that so 
completely oratorical a temperament — 
especially when the talent excited the 
emotions not by barbaric splendor of 
language so much as by simple words 
alive with the fire of their meaning — 
must compose successfully only when its 
own nature vibrated finely and deeply 
to the workings of its own genius. So 
wholly had the orator identified himself 
with the intense scene which he lived 



DANIEL WEBSTER 55 

through as the soul of Adams that 
letters from all sides sought the origin 
of the speech, and scepticism met the 
statement that it was imagined. 

From another point of view, also, this 
oration turns an entertaining light on 
Mr. Webster's character. Few read it 
without being struck by the change in 
treatment marked by the change in sub- 
ject. For Adams is all the real ardor 
and most of the space, for Jefferson only 
decorous praise, so that a hearer or 
reader, learning only from these words, 
might well suppose that Jefferson's im- 
portance in the history of his country 
was far less than that of his companion 
statesman. The Federalist prejudices of 
Ebenezer Webster still lived in Daniel. 

During these fruitful years, while he 
was building some of the most enduring 
pillars of his fame as a lawyer and as a 
master of patriotic eloquence, his activ- 
ity had also important results in other 
fields. , ^Qpn after leaving Congress, he 



56 DANIEL WEBSTER 

opposed the compromise of 1819, — a fact 
of which the interest lies in his later 
attitude on the slavery question. A 
year later, as a delegate to the conven- 
tion for revising the Constitution of Mas- 
sachusetts, he made two lucid and 
effective arguments, one favoring the 
retention of a property basis for repre- 
sentation in the Senate, the other aiding 
an effort to make judicial officers re- 
movable by the governor and council 
upon the address of two- thirds instead 
of a majority of each branch of the 
legislature. 

The permanent arguments for an inde- 
pendent judiciary, at least as preserved 
in his works, are stated briefly and with 
little attempt at eloquence. The plea 
for property representation, a more elab- 
orate address, is full of ripe thought 
firmly expounded. He was opposing 
Democratic prejudices and laying him- 
self open to suspicion and to the kind of 
misrepresentation of which he received 



DANIEL WEBSTER 57 

so much later, and of which an example 
may be found in Theodore Parker's 
treatment of this address and of Mr. 
Webster's early speeches in favor of 
commerce. Whatever may be said of 
his later relation to material interests, 
the respect which he showed at this 
period for property is accepted to-day 
as a proof of the useful and vital nature 
of his thought. His argument before 
the convention was that there ought to 
be a difference in origin between the two 
houses, and that, as one branch was 
based on population, property was the 
best basis for the other. Shrewdness in 
answering objections shared by most 
American citizens is noticeable through- 
out this argument. ^^It has been said 
that we propose to give to property, 
merely as such, a control over the 
people, universally considered. But 
this I take to be not at all the true 
nature of the proposition. The Senate 
is not to be a check on the people, but 



58 DANIEL WEBSTER 

on the House of Representatives. It is 
the case of an authority given to one 
agent to check or control another." 

He drew a vivid and distinct picture 
of ^^the mischievous influence of the 
popular power when disconnected with 
property," in the case of Rome, at the 
time when her liberty fell under the 
arm of Gsesar. The majority could be 
reached by bribes and largesses, and 
used to overpower the substantial citi- 
zens. ^'Property was in the hands of 
one description of men, and power in 
those of another ; and the balance of the 
constitution was destroyed." It was be- 
cause the popular magistrates repre- 
sented those who had not a stake in the 
Commonwealth that Rome laid her neck 
at the feet of her conqueror. The part 
of property in the English Revolution of 
1688 and in our own war for indepen- 
dence was also touched upon. With re- 
strained earnestness the orator pleaded 
that this question should not be confused 



DAJS^IEL WEBSTER 59 

with the power of a few rich men, but 
looked upon as concerning the rights of 
property distributed among many; for 
the proposal was to continue the prac- 
tice of apportioning senators according 
to the entire amount of property in the 
districts. The victory was won at the 
time ; but shortly after the principle was 
wiped out of the American nation, ap- 
parently forever. 



in. 

In 1823 Mr. \yebster returned to Con- 
gress as a representative from the Boston 
district, and was put at the head of the 
Judiciary Committee by Mr. Clay. In 
preparing and defending a bill to amend 
the judicial system, he accomplished a 
valuable task ; but the most brilliant 
expression of his powers given in the 
first few years after his return was in the 
speech which he made in January of 
1824, on his own resolution to provide 
by law for defraying the expense of a 
commissioner to Greece. Of this speech 
he wrote, in 1831, ^^ I think I am more 
fond of this child than of any of the 
family." 

The public expected a display of fire, 
but Mr. Webster had no such intention. 
The Greek revolution aroused his sym- 
pathies ; but what he sought was an 
opportunity to refute the doctrines of 
the Holy Alliance, affirming the right 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 61 

of absolute governments to form concerts 
for the purpose of crushing rebellion 
anywhere, — any insurrection threaten- 
ing them all by defying the pretensions 
on which they are founded. A5 Mr. 
Webster summarized it, ^^The end and 
scope of this amalgamated policy are 
neither more nor less than this, — to in- 
terfere, by force, for any government, 
against any people who may resist it. 
Be the state of the people what it may, 
they shall not rise : be the government 
what it will, it shall not be opposed. '^ 
Nowhere, he believed, but in this coun- 
try, and perhaps in England, were these 
monstrous principles likely to be re- 
sisted. ^' Human liberty may yet, per- 
haps, be obliged to repose its principal 
hopes on the intelligence and vigor of 
the Saxon race.'' To the objection that 
it was not an American affair, that the 
thunder rolled only at a distance, that, 
whatever others might suffer, we should 
remain safe, Mr. Webster replied: ^^I 



62 DANIEL WEBSTER 

think it is a sufficient answer to say to 
this that we are one of the nations of 
the earth ; that we have an interest, 
therefore, in the preservation of that 
system of national law and national in- 
tercourse which has heretofore subsisted, 
so beneficially for all.'' 

The increase of the commercial spirit 
and the intercourse of nations had given 
us a high concern in the principles upon 
which that intercourse was founded, but 
Mr. Webster was not willing to rely 
only on the ground of direct interest. 
He appealed to all that we had gained 
from the principles of lawful resistance, 
and asked if the duty was not imposed 
upon us to give our weight to the side 
of liberty and justice. Our right to in- 
terfere, if the renewed combination of 
the European Continental sovereigns 
against the newly established free States 
of South America should be made, was 
no more clear than our right to protest 
if the same combination were directed 



DANIEL WEBSTER 63 

against the smallest state in Europe. 
*^We shall not, I trust, act upon the 
notion of dividing the world with the 
Holy Alliance, and complain of nothing 
done by them in their hemisphere if 
they will not interfere with ours.^^ He 
did not advise armed intervention, for 
he drew clearly the line between the 
practicable and the impossible ; but he 
did plead for all the help that moral 
sympathy could give to a struggling 
people. Of the Holy Alliance he said : 
^^They might indeed prefer that we 
should express no dissent from the doc- 
trines they have avowed and the appli- 
cation which they have made of those 
doctrines to the law of Greece. But I 
ti'ust we are not disposed to leave them 
in any doubt as to our sentiments upon 
these important subjects.'^ 

The next of the questions of universal 
interest, then and now, upon which Mr. 
Webster spoke words which retain their 
weight through changing times, was the 



64 DAXIEL WEBSTER 

tariff. He made a strong argument for 
the laissez-faire doctrine in 1824 ; but as 
lie modified his position radically four 
years later, it will be well to notice first 
the changes that about this time dis- 
turbed his private life, since they are 
closely connected with the change of 
tone that, little by little, was to show 
itself in his public career. 

Grace Fletcher Webster, often spoken 
of by the orator in after days as the 
mother of his children, apparently had 
no small role in keeping alert, while she 
lived, those high principles which her 
husband had breathed in with the New 
Hampshire mountain air. Her upright 
New England faith and sweet loyalty 
must have been one of the strongest bar- 
riers resisting the temptations which lay 
before the impressionable statesman. 
Bits from her latest letters give the feel- 
ing of her character. One written Jan. 
14, 1827, ends : — 



DANIEL WEBSTER 65 

^^I received with delight Mr. Can- 
ning's speech in Parliament. He is a 
jewel in the crown of Great Britain. 
Such a mind is one of Heaven's best 
gifts. Every other earthly possession is 
dross to it. You will think, I fancy, 
that I am in the heroic vein this morn- 
ing. I do feel inspired, with two letters 
from you and reading Mr. Canning's 
speech. But I am, 

' ^^ As ever, entirely yours, 

''Grace Webster. '^ 

Another begins : — 

Boston, Jan. 18, 1827. 
''I have been reading this morning 
a speech of yours, my beloved husband, 
which makes me hail this anniversary 
of your birth with increased delight. 
May heaven add blessings with years ! 
and many, many may it add to a life so 
valued and so valuable ! I pity the man 
50 dead to every sentiment, not only of 



66 DANIEL WEBSTER j 

honor, but honesty, that could need an; 
argument to convince him of the justice^ 
of the claim you urged ; and I blush fonj 
the honor of our country, that there "^ 
should be a majority of such sordid souls * 
in Congress. I hope you will pardon me i 
for meddling with such high matters. ^^ ^ 

In December of the same year, when . 
she was ill, she begins : — vl 

Friday Morning, 11 o'clock, ! 
December, 1827. ' 

'^The first tribute of my heart is to ° 
the God who gives me strength to write ; i 
and the first of my pen to you, my best 
beloved.^' 



^ 



t 



The next note is the last. It begins : 

''I wrote you yesterday, my beloved'? 
husband, a very poor letter ; but I flatter i 
myself that a poor letter from me will {\ 
be as acceptable as a good one from Jj 
another. '^ JI 



f f 



DANIEL WEBSTER 67 

She died in January, 1828 ; and in 
829 Mr. Webster married Caroline Le 
Loy, of New York, who brought him 
ioney and social position, and nothing f 
[se that can be traced in his life. In 
le same year he lost Ezekiel, the strong- 
Hilled brother, another of those close 
ifluences that held the early healthy 
dor of New England ideals about him. 
Is early as June, 1827, he had been 
lected, somewhat against his will, to 
le vacant Massachusetts seat in the 
ational Senate. During the year fol- 
)wing his wife's death he voted and 
)oke for the ' ' tariff of abominations ^ ' ; 
ad from that period he came to be 
^cognized more and more as the repre- 
imtative of rich New England business 
len. In the year following EzekiePs 
eath and his second marriage, he gave 
le greatest exhibition of all his powers, 
nd kept himself at his highest level ; 
bt after this he steadily declined from j 
^ height at which his altering nature 
ould no longer sustain itself. 



68 DAKCEL WEBSTEE 

The character of American statesm* 

had changed since the shining days 

Hamilton and Washington, and U 

nature of American thought was feelii 

the first results of the rising tide of me 

cantile excitement. The Boston cor 

panions of Mr. Webster^ after his greater 

successes, were worldly and convivia- 

He has said himself that his health w> 

lowered by eating and drinking t(^ 

much, and there is no doubt that li 

came to absorb alcohol with somethic 

like the ease with which he absorbe 

ideas. The easy-going, free, jolly, almo;i 

indifferent way in which he natural! 

took life received aid from this chang 

in companionship and habit, and pc^, 

sibly, though less surely, from the p4J 

companying increase in his miscellaneoy 

relations with women. At the same tim 

his looseness in affairs of money bega 

to do its work. ^^We all know,'' sai- 

R. C. Winthrop, in his eulogy after M4 

Webster's death, ^Hhat, while he couP 



DA:sriEL WEBSTER 69 

vaster the great questions of national 
nance, and was never weary in main- 
lining the importance of upholding the 
ational credit, he never cared quite / 
fiough about his own finances, or took ^ 
[articular pains to preserve his own per- 
9nal credit. We all know that he was 
bmetimes impatient of differences, and 
JDmetimes arrogant and overbearing 
toward opponents. His own conscious- 
less of surpassing powers, and the flat- 
teries — I had almost said the idolatries 
— of innumerable friends, would account 
or much more of all this than he ever 
lisplayed." All these tendencies grew 
^long together. Although he seemed to 
t)ay few of his larger bills, hotel keepers 
ieeming it an honor to have him as a 
5uest and wine merchants being glad to 
caake him gifts, although his practice 
\w'as most lucrative and his fees enormous, 
llie was always in need of money; and 
'nobody could tell what became of his 
Ireceipts. His easy nature gave freely 



I 

1 



70 DANIEL WEBSTER 

when there was cash about him; an 
stories are numerous to show his generou 
impulses toward the needy, and his care 
lessness in paying one bill several time 
at intervals, if only the creditor coulc 
find him with money in his purse. 

One result of his irresponsible mode oi 
life was that New England business mer 
later formed a trust, the income to go tc 
him, and then, if she survived him, tc;- 
his wife ; and it is believed, though not 
known with the same certainty, that 
presents from individuals interested in 
Mr. Webster's genius and in the tariff 
were frequent and enormous. Some of 
those who came to be the intimates of hisi 
daily life, were trivial sycophants ; andrf 
all these things together — the change in^ 
his friends, the physical effect of tooi 
much dissipation, the moral influence of 
being largely supported by monopo- 
lists—prepared him for his retreat from 
some of the positions he had so noblyj 
held. He was still to raise his fame! 



DANIEL WEBSTER 71 

ligher, as the Great Defender of the 
Constitution ; but the influences which 
rinally accomplished so much are best 
boticed when they came into his life. 
The tariff question has been so contin- 
lally thrashed over ever since the war 
ha,t Mr. Webster's principal stands need 
3e mentioned only in the most general 
oerms. He had opposed the tariff of 
k816, he made a great speech against 
;;hat of 1824, and he voted for ^Hhe 
^riff of abominations" in 1828. Of 
jourse, it is not difficult for a shrewd 
(nan to base a change of principle on a 
pretended or actual change in condi- 
tions ; and such is Mr. Webster's de- 
fence. At first he had laid stress on the 
constitutional argument ; but in 1824 the 
bulk of his speech was a full and lucid 
statement of the well-known laissez-faire 
ioctrines, in moderate form, skilfully 
supported by contemporary examples. 
This exposition stands to-day as one of 
he most comprehensible and persuasive 



I 



72 DANIEL WEBSTER 

utterances on the subject ever made in 
the United States. He was the ablest 
opponent of Henry Clay's famous 
^^ American policy." In 1827 and 182& 
he supported the ^ ^ bill of abomination ' '"* 
on the ground that ^^his constituents" 
had invested their money on the faith 
of what had become the law. There is 
certainly no logical inconsistency, but 
the change was universally connected 
with Mr. Webster's growing relations 
with a class of men different from those 
who had helped to mould his early 
thought. Colonel Hayne was able to 
give later, in the great debate, the only 
thrust which Mr. Webster but feebly 
met, when he said: ^^On that occasion,^] 
sir, the gentleman assumed a position 
which commanded the respect and ad- 
miration of his country. . . . With a 
profound sagacity, a fulness of knowl- , 
edge, and a richness of illustration that 
have never been surpassed, he main-; 
tained and established the principles of 



DANIEL WEBSTER 73 

commercial freedom on a foundation 
never to be shaken. . . . Sir, when I 
recollect the position which the gentle- 
man once occupied, and that which he 
now holds in public estimation, in rela- 
tion to this subject, it is not at all sur- 
prising that the tariff should be hateful 
to his ears.^' 

The greatest among those early tradi- 
tions was now, however, to have its 
most glorious expression. Although the 
commercial spirit was settling over the 
land, one great ideal topic of debate was 
at the height of its existence. The 
Constitution was in the air. Every- 
body talked about it. Multitudes would 
listen to a discussion of it. Whenever 
two or three statesmen were gathered to- 
gether, they compared ideas about it. 
We who have grown up since the war 
settled the last of the vital constitutional 
questions by the most conclusive of all 
I arguments, cannot readily conceive the 
I reality which then clothed, in the gen- 



74 DAI^IEL WEBSTER 

eral mind, that magic word. We no 
longer appeal to it. They appealed, on 
the most critical of all their problems, 
to little else. The extension of slavery 
was involved in it, and the right to de- 
stroy the Union was the centre of it. 
Straining every nerve to bend it one 
way or the other, stood on one side 
the South, led by the cool and penetrat- 
ing mind of Calhoun ; on the other, 
the North, hardly knowing the solidest 
foundations of its faith until they were 
pointed out by the eloquence of the 
Great Defender. 

When he entered the brightest stage 
of this mighty duel, Daniel Webster was 
a sight to rivet every eye. His frame, / 
grown larger, but not yet flabby, gave . 
new majesty and potency to his face and 
voice and carriage ; and his mind, just 
turning the summit of its greatness, was 
spurred to its most tremendous efforts by 
the universal excitement which centred i 
in this momentous question. As Mr. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 75 

Webster strolled about the streets of 
Boston, loitering before the windows, 
looking at everything, everybody tui-ned 
to look at him, even those who never 
guessed who he was. His effect on the 
most casual passer was hypnotic. He 
gave the impression of immense, slum- 
bering power. He could go on without 
effort, and still be great, because the 
force of his mind was in fundamental 
principles, universal truths, with which 
I he induced the Supreme Court to over- 
rule decided cases, with which he pene- 
trated to the heart of the issue in politi- 
cal controversy. In the war about the 
Constitution he was, therefore, always 
ready. When he was suddenly called to 
the critical battle, he had been prepar- 
ing during his lifetime. To one who 
asked him if the reply to Hayne was 
extemporaneous, he replied, ^^ Young 
man, there is no such thing as extempo- 
raneous acquisition. ' ' 

The doctrine of nullification — that. 



76 DANIEL WEBSTEK 

instead of the federal government being 
the sole judge of its own powers, each 
State retained the right to decide for 
itself whether a federal law was consti- 
tutional — rested on the theory that the 
national union was a compact existing 
only during the consent of the separate 
members. The head exponent of this 
theory was John C. Calhoun, who, after 
years of debate with him, said that Mr. 
Webster stated an opponent's arguments 
more fairly than anybody he had ever 
seen. In taking his stand for union, on 
which he ardently believed liberty and 
happiness depended, Mr. Webster an- 
swered the subtleties of the nullifiers, as 
a necessary step in strengthening the ( 
position of the Xorth ; but he relied « 
still more on the explanation of conse- 
quences and the appeal to patriotism. 
The temperate tone of a large mind per- 1 
vades his language on this vital subject. 
^•My son," he once said, ^^I war with i 
principles, and not with men. ' ' At this . 



1 



DANIEL WEBSTER 77 

period his thought seemed loaded with 
the weightiest principles and lightened 
with the brightest truths. 

This reply to Hayne and Nullification 
is called in his private correspondence 
^'number one among my political ef- 
forts." Its importance is now known 
to all the world. '^The discourses at 
Plymouth Eock and Bunker Hill were 
not for an hour," says Judge Chamber- 
lain, ^'nor was the Great Eeply. In 
the days of their utterance, they were 
resplendent, unprecedented eloquence ; 
but they spoke truest when they became 
wisdom to Lincoln and valor to Grant, p 
they rang loudest when heard along the 
front of battle, and inspired deeds of 
immortal heroism on a hundred fields." 

This speech was immediately the re- 
sult of accident. While Robert Young 
Hayne, of South Carolina, was speaking 
in January, 1830, on a resolution to 
restrict the sales of public lands, Mr. 
Webster dropped into the Senate, after 



78 DANIEL WEBSTEE 

the adjournment of the Supreme Court. 
He arose to reply ; but, as the Senate 
adjourned, he spoke the next day, de- 
livering an eloquent argument, which 
has been almost submerged by his more ' 
brilliant effort a few days later, gener- 
ally called the ^'Eeply to Hayne." The 
next day Hayne replied, refusing to con- 
sent to an adjournment which should^ 
enable his opponent to be present with- 
out neglecting the important case in 
court. ^^Let the discussion proceed,'^ 
said Mr. Webster. ^ ^ I am willing to re- 
ceive the gentleman's fire.'' Mr. Hayne 
completed his speech several days later, 
and Mr. Webster was prevented from 
replying at once only by an adjourn- { 
ment. 

He spoke the day following, from few 
notes hastily prepared. Edward Everett 
tells us that in the intervals between 
these speeches Mr. Webster was the only 
person in Washington who seemed en- J 
tirely at his ease. The attacks of the 



DA:N^IEL WEBSTER 79 

nullifiers on the Constitution had grown 
rapidly fiercer and more organized, and 
the loyal citizens were not at all sure of 
their answer. The Southerners seemed 
to gain strength with every combat. 
That some great blow was needed was 
felt throughout the North. After din- 
ner Mr. Webster lay on the sofa, dozing 
or asleep, according to his habit, when 
he began to laugh softly to himself. To 
inquiry he replied that he had just 
thought of a way to turn Colonel 
Hayne's quotation about Banquo's ghost 
against himself, and was going to get up 
and make a note of it, which he did, 
and then continued his nap. 

The audience which awaited his ap- 
pearance in the Senate Chamber was 
intense with anxiety. The orator's first 
step was to lessen the tension, and pre- 
pare them to proceed calmly over an 
extended argument. 

^^Mr. President," he began, ^^when 
the mariner has been tossed for many 



80 DANIEL WEBSTER 

days ill thick weather and on an un- 
known sea, he naturally avails himself 
of the first pause in the storm, the ear- 
liest glance of the sun, to take his lati- 
tude and ascertain how far the elements 
have driven him from his true course. 
Let us imitate this prudence, and before 
we float further on the waves of this de- 
bate, refer to the point from which we 
departed, that we may at least be able 
to conjecture where we now are. I ask 
for the reading of the resolution before 
the Senate.'' 

By the time it was read, the assembly, 
with nerves relaxed, was watching with 
an easier expectation. Mr. Webster 
began to banter his opponent, and turn 
away the personal elements in his 
attack. Although having no distin- 
guished gift of humor, and using it spar- 
ingly for that reason, he loved it in 
others, and could himself bring enough 
of it to his assistance to carry him over 
places where nothing else would serve so 



DAOTEL WEBSTER 81 

/well. It is said that the deftness and 
enjoyment with which he turned Colonel 
Hayne's quotation from ^^ Macbeth" first 
filled his followers in the Senate with 
confidence. After a little more repartee 
he became serious, and covered with 
masterly simplicity and fulness of reason 
all the subordinate points in his oppo- 
nent's speech, first rising to rushing 
eloquence when he reached the end 
of his reply to Hayne's attack on 
Massachusetts. 

^^Mr. President, I shall enter on no 
encomium on Massachusetts. She needs 
none. There she is. Behold her, and 
judge for yourselves. There is her his- 
tory. The world knows it by heart.' 
The past, at least, is secure. There is 
Boston and Concord and Lexington and 
Bunker Hill ,• and there they will remain 
forever." As he went on with the fa- 
mous tribute, our best eye-witness tells 
as, and turned his glowing eyes, inten- 
tionally or otherwise, upon a group of 



82 DAKIEL WEBSTER 

Massachusetts men in one corner of the 
gallery, as he ended the encomium, — 
'^It will fall at last, if fall it must, 
amidst the proudest monuments of its 
own glory, and on the very spot of its 
origin," — as these words were spoken, 
the New England men shed tears, like 
girls. 

The orator's final task was before 
him, — by far the most grave and impor- 
tant duty, as he called it himself. He 
must say, and say with all the power 
within him, what were the true prin- 
ciples of the Constitution under which 
they were there assembled. ^^Sir, I 
have met the occasion, not sought itj 
and I shall proceed to state my own sen- 
timents, without challenging for them 
any particular regard, with studied 
plainness, and as much precision as 
possible. ' ^ 

With studied plainness, with a pre- 
cision that has stood the hardest tests of 
time, with an eloquence measured to 



1 



DANIEL WEBSTER 83 

work at once upon the minds and the 
emotions of a great assembly wrought to 
the highest pitch of interest, but an elo- 
quence so deeply founded that it did 
more than any other single effort to 
form future American history, he pro- 
ceeded to state his own sentiments. The 
argument is known, the glowing ending 
is still recited throughout the land. Its 
effect on those who heard it is thus 
recorded for us: — 

^^The speech was over, but the tones 
of the orator still lingered upon the ear j 
and the audience, unconscious of the 
close, retained their positions. The agi- 
tated countenance, the heaving breast, 
the suffused eye, attested the continued 
influence of the spell upon them. 
Hands that in the excitement of the 
moment had sought each other still 
remained closed in an unconscious 
grasp. . . . 

^'"VAHien the Vice-President, hastening 
to dissolve the spell, angrily called to 



84 DANIEL WEBSTER 

order ! order ! there never was a deeper 
stillness. Not a movement, not a ges- 
ture had been made, not a whisper ut- 
tered. Order ! Silence could almost 
have heard itself, it was so supernatu- 
rally still.'' 

No wonder Calhoun brought down his 
hammer, and awoke the assembly with a 
start. With one long-drawn breath they 
departed. But in the war which Cal- 
houn had led the greatest forensic 
battle had closed in a glorious victory 
for Mr. Webster and the North. ^^It 
crushes nullification," said James Madi- 
son, ^ '- and must hasten an abandonment 
of secession. ' ' One of those who heard 
the speech wrote of the orator: ^^He 
was a totally different thing from any 
public speaker I ever heard. I some- 
times felt as if I were looking at a mam- 
moth treading, at an equable and stately 
pace, his native cane-brake, and with- 
out apparent consciousness crushing ob- 
stacles which nature had never designed 
as impediments to him.'' 



DANIEL WEBSTER 85 

This speech did much to extend Mr. 
Webster's reputation in parts of the 
country where he had been little known. 
He did not rest on one splendid effort, 
but continued to fight the battle for 
nationalism against the South in the 
Senate, making a series of arguments 
which, although overshadowed by the 
Eeply to Hayne, were of constant value 
in giving confidence to the North. The 
best known of them is the long speech of 
1833, in Avhich he maintained, against 
Calhoun, that the Union was not a fed- 
eration of States. While he was thus 
continuing his work of defending the 
Constitution, he was proving the clear- 
ness, depth, and range of his financial 
understanding by endeavoring to check 
Andrew Jackson's onslaught on the na- 
tional bank. In 1832 he spoke in favor 
of renewing the charter ; and, when the 
President vetoed the bill, Mr. Webster 
mingled a perfectly accurate exposition 
of the economic truths involved with a 



S6 DANIEL WEBSTEK 

temperate but scathing rebuke to the 
ignorant autocrat. 

^^It presents the chief magistrate of( 
the Union in the attitude of arguing 
away the powers of that government 
over which he has been chosen to pre- 
side, and adopting for this purpose 
modes of reasoning which, even unden 
the influence of all proper feeling toward! 
high official station, it is difficult to re- 
gard as respectable. It appeals to every 
prejudice which may betray men into 
a mistaken view of their own interests, , 
and to every passion which may lead! 
them to disobey the impulses of theiri 
understanding. ... It is a State paper 
which finds no topic too exciting for its I 
use, no passion too inflammable for its 
address and its solicitation. ' ' The Presi- 
dent soon made his well-known couj), re- 
moving two Secretaries of the Treasury-, 
in order to find one who would execute; 
his will by withdrawing the government i, 
deposits from the Bank of the United 



DANIEL WEBSTER 87 

States and put them in the State banks. 
Mr. Webster presented to Congress, Jan. 
20, 1833, a series of resolutions adopted 
at a public meeting in Boston, attribut- 
ing the prevailing financial distress to 
the President's bigotry, and spoke in 
support of them in the Senate. One of 
ohe shorter speeches in this series ends 
in a rather noticeable expression of con- 
fidence in the power of public opinion 
to bring good out of evil: ^^ Political 
mischiefs will be repaired by political 
redress. That which has been unwisely 
done will be wisely undone ; and this is 
the way, sir, in which our enlightened 
and independent people live through their 
iifficulties. . . . Although these black 
and portentous clouds may break on our 
lieads, and the tempest overpower us for 
a while, still that can never be forever 
)verwhelmed, that can never go finally 
30 the bottom, which truth and duty bear 
ip." In one of these speeches against 
lackson, called the ^^Presidential Pro- 



88 DANIEL WEBSTER 

test," occurred that famous passage* 
declaring that the encroachment of the: 
Executive on the other branches of thej 
government was to be regarded as a 
threat against the Constitution, and 
treated as our fathers treated an act of 
Parliament which had brought as yet* 
no suffering. ^ ^ They went to war against* 
a preamble, they fought seven years 
against a declaration. . . . On this ques- 
tion of principle, while actual suffering' 
was yet far off, they raised their flag^; 
against a power to which, for purposes) 
of foreign conquest and subjugation,' 
Rome, in the height of her glory, is noti 
to be compared, — a power which has; 
dotted over the surface of the whole 
globe with her possessions and military j 
posts, whose morning drum-beat, follow- 
ing the sun, and keeping company with 
the hours, circles the earth with one 
continuous strain of the martial airs of 
England." 

During 1833 Webster made a tour of 



DANIEL WEBSTER 89 

the Western States, which was some- 
thing of an ovation, although it is 
agreed that the style of his oratory was 
never popular in the sense in which 
Clay's was. It lacked the personal, win- 
ning quality which charmed all kinds of 
people equally. It did not inspire love 
and devotion, but, appealing so largely 
to the mind, was best suited to intelli- 
gent listeners, such as faced him in the 
Senat-e or on JS'ew England memorial 
occasions. He was not naturally a 
stump orator, nor had he that first req- 
uisite of a demagogue, — a constant pro- '' 
fession of regard for the people. He 
mentioned them seldom, and seldom 
, went further than that kind of abstract 
cojifidence illustrated by the close of the 
•bank speech just quoted. His austere 
itaste and wide judicial mind were not 
;elements to endear him to the mass of " 
men. Still, Mr. Webster believed in his 
popularity, and firmly expected to be 
President. Such an ambition was more 



90 DANIEL WEBSTER 

natural in a great man then than it 
; would be now, when we take mediocrity 
in that o£Q.ce for granted. Mr. Webster 
had seen Washington, Adams, Jefferson, 
Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy 
Adams occupy the chair in succession. 
Andrew Jackson was the first ignorant 
'J popular hero put into the highest office ; 
and Mr. Webster did not realize that 
the tide had turned, and the time passed 
when the Presidency was to be the re- 
ward of statesmanship. He felt it to be 
his due, and the flatterers with whom 
he chose to surround himself helped to 
fan the flame. Any one who will read 
the reminiscences of his intimate friend, 
Peter Harvey, will receive a vivid idea 
of the kind of man Mr. Webster now 
took to his bosom. The legislature of 
Massachusetts nominated the orator for 
the Presidency ; and in 1836 he re- 
ceived the electoral vote of that State, 
and out of the whole convention that 
was all he did receive. Mr. Webster 



DA:N^IEL WEBSTER 91 

steadily opposed both the spoils system 
and the tendency to reward military 
men with civil office, but he could not 
stem the tide that set in that direction 
with Jackson. 



IV. 

The panic which Mr. Webster had so 
often foretold in his conflict with the 
President came in 1837, and at about 
the same time the first loud rumblings 
of the slavery conflict were heard in the 
dispute over the annexation of Texas. 
As his course on this momentous issue 
has overshadowed in the mind of pos- 
terity all the other deeds of his later 
years, it is well to notice how he stood 
in the early stages of the dispute, which 
culminated, as far as his career was con- 
cerned, on a certain 7th of March some 
thirteen years later. In 1837 he spoke 
thus : ^^I do say that the annexation of 
Texas would tend to prolong the dura- 
tion and increase the extent of African 
slavery on this continent. I have long 
held that opinion, and I would not now 
suppress it for any consideration on 
earth. And because it does increase 
the evils of slavery, because it will in- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 93 

crease the number of slaves and prolong 
the duration of their bondage, — because 
it does all this, I oppose it without con- 
dition and without qualification, at this 
time and all times, now and forever.'^ 

He spoke thus several times ; but an 
important change had taken place in 
him, since instead of fighting in the 
front, where we might expect to see 
him, he kept in the background, and 
displayed his principles only occasion- 
ally, and then with seeming reluctance. 
The ambition to be President rather 
than to be a real leader, which was 
growing on him, made him more cau- 
tious and less intrepid, more mundane 
and less clear-sighted. Formerly he 
leaped into the thick of the fight when 
a blow was aimed at one of the prin- 
ciples he loved. Now his great powers 
of argument seemed turned to the in- 
vention of excuses for inaction or 
compromise. A few years before, in 
opposing the compromise tariff bill with 



94 DAOTEL WEBSTEE 

which Henry Clay sought to pacifyJ 
South Carolina, Mr. Webster had said, 
that the time had come to test the Con-' 
stitution, and that he was not in favor of 
sacrificing great principles to sectional 
interests; and, although he finally ac- 
quiesced in this bill, it was after he hadl 
given clear proof of courage and convic- 
tion in supporting Jackson's resolute 
stand against the followers of Calhoun. 

Even now, in 1837, he could still say, 
at Kiblo's Garden, although such pas- 
sages are too rare, words which com- 
pletely answer his later sophistries: 
^^On the general question of slavery a 
great portion of the community is al- 
ready strongly excited. The subject has 
not only attracted attention as a ques- 
tion of politics, but it has struck a far 
deeper-toned chord. It has arrested the 
feeling of the country. It has taken 
strong hold on the consciences of men. 
He is a rash man, indeed, and little 
conversant with human nature, and es- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 95 

pecially has he a very erroneous estimate 
of the character of the people of this 
country, who supposes that a feeling of 
this kind is to be trifled with or de- 
spised. It will cause itself to be re- 
spected. It may be reasoned with : it 
may be made willing — I believe it is 
entirely willing — to fulfil all existing 
engagements and all existing duties, to 
uphold and defend the Constitution as 
it is established, with whatever regrets 
about some provisions which it does 
actually contain. But to coerce it into 
silence, to restrain its free expression, to 
seek to comj^ress and confine it, warm as 
it is, and more heated as such endeavors 
would inevitably render it, — should this 
be attempted, I know nothing, even in 
the Constitution or in the Union itself, 
which would not be endangered by the 
explosion which might follow.'^ 

In the summer of 1839 he went to 
England, perhaps for rest, perhaps to 
afiect the Presidential nomination ; and, 



96 DANIEL WEBSTER 

when he landed in December, he re- 
ceived the news that General Harrison 
had been made the standard-bearer of 
the Whigs, the supporters of the tariff 
and the inheritors since 1834 of some 
of the leading principles of Federalism. 
Mr. Webster accepted his misfortune 
calmly, and threw himself into the cam- 
I)aign, making many speeches with de- 
cided effect. The Whig victory resulted 
in giving him the office of Secretary of 
Stat^', which he filled so well that his 
reputation mounted high in a new field. 
Senator Lodge, one of the most judicial 
of his biographers, believes that nobody 
except John Quincy Adams ever showed 
higher qualities in the State Depart- 
ment. Among the many useful negotia- 
tions tactfully performed, the Ashburton 
Treaty is by far the best known. There 
were many grievances between England 
and America ; and Mr. Webster showed 
patience, skill, and fairness in carrying 
through the work, settling the east half 



DAOTEL WEBSTER 97 

of the northern boundary and introduc- 
ing a valuable extradition clause. It is 
noticeable that he defended the treaty 
against his own party, and stood by the 
President when the rest of the cabinet 
resigned. He also carried through a 
treaty with Portugal, and soon after 
showed his ability in other fields still 
great, though less than it had been, by 
such law arguments as the Girard Will 
ease (1840), and such eloquence as the 
second Bunker Hill oration (1843). In 
his constitutional reasoning as Secretary 
of State he was doubtless enormously 
helped by Justice Story, to whom he 
wrote in 1842: ^^You can do more for 
me than all the rest of the world, be- 
cause you can give me the lights I most 
want ,• and, if you furnish them, I shall 
be confident they will be true lights. I 
shall trouble you greatly the next three 
months.^' Letters from each of these 
men to the other were kept by Mr. 
Webster from publication after Story's 



98 DANIEL WEBSTER 

death, in order that his own fame might 
not be lessened, — a fact which is estab- 
lished beyond doubt, but seems incred- 
ible when we think of the Daniel 
Webster of 1820. 

At the end of 1842, his principal tasks 
being acicomplished, he resigned to prac- 
tise law and to live at Marshfield, on 
the Massachusetts seaside farm, where he 
still took so keen a joy in nature. An- 
ecdotes of this time show that his jovial- 
ity and spontaneous feelings for large 
and healthy things were still strong in 
him. That love of the open air and the 
beauty of nature, which did so much to 
give simplicity and size to his style 
and thought, cannot, perhaps, be better 
shown than by one of his letters written 
some years later from this country home, 
with its old fort and its mixed visitors, 
of whom Audubon was one: ^^But the 
morning itself few people, inhabitants 
of cities, know anything about. Among 
all our good people, not one in a thou- 



DAJJIEL WEBSTER 99 

? r*^ '"^^ ^^^ ^"» rise once a year. They 
i ^°«^ "^"tWng of the mor4g. The'r 
'\ idea of it is that n- ic n * , 

day ^h,eh comes along after a cup of 
coffee and a beefsteak or a piece of 
toa^t. With them morning is notTnei 
issuing of light, a nei,^ bursting forth of 
. the sun, a ne^ leaking up of all that has 
ife, from a sort of temporary death, to 
behold again the works of God, the 
heavens and the earth. It is only a*' 
part of the domestic day belonging to 
breakfast, to reading the newspapers, 
answering notes, sending the children 
to school, and giving orders for dinner 
The first faint streak of light, the eas- 
iest purpling of the east, which the 
lark springs up to greet, and the deeper 
ind deeper coloring into orange and 
-ed, till at length the 'glorious sun is 
een, regent of day,' —this they never 
■njoy ; for they never see it." 

Mr. Webster was not a candidate for 
he Presidency in 1844, but supported 



100 DANIEL WEBSTEE 
Henry Clay. In the following year he ij 
returned to the Senate, four days aft^r 
the passage of the resolutions annexing 
Texas. The slavery issue was now cov- 
ering most of the political sky. It is< 
worth noticing that a speech delivered' 
by ]\Ir. Webster in 1844 at Faneuil Hall 
is not printed in his works. In that 
speech he said: ''What! when all the 
civilized world is opposed to slavery; 
when morality denounces it; when 
Christianity denounces it; when every- 
thing respected, everything good, bears 
one united witness against it, — is it for; 
America,— America, the land of Wash- 
ington, the model republic of the world, ^ 
is it for America to come to its assist- 
ance, and to insist that the maintenance 
of slavery is necessary to the support of 
her institutions ?" These flashes, how- 
ever, do not indicate the general toner 
of his speeches or the impression which^j 
was growing on the country — an impres-| 
sion fairly enough represented by John 



DANIEL WEBSTER 101 

iuincy Adams's words, uttered several 
ears before — that Mr. Webster was 
< tampering witli the South on the slav- 
ry and Texas questions." 

In the war measures which occupied 
::ongress after his return Mr. Webster 
^i(^k little part. In the matter of the 
)regon boundary and the '^54-10 or 
Lght" outcry he helped on a peaceable 
olution; and he answered successfully 
ome bitter charges of improper ex- 
)enditure connected with his work on 
he Ashburton treaty. The conclusion 
inaUy was that he had been, as 
ilways, careless in his accounts, but 
lot dishonest. 

' In 1847 he voted for the ^'Wilmot 
Proviso," forbidding slavery in territory 
:hereafter to be acquired; and he op- 
posed also territorial aggrandizement, 
mainly because it would make the slav- 
3ry question more difficult. He pre- 
sented to Congress the resolutions of 
the Massachusetts legislature against the 



102 DANIEL WEBSTER 

extension of slavery,- but some of hi I 
speeches on this subject at this time ar< 
already suspiciously mild, and dwel 
more on the legal than on the morai 
aspect of the problem, putting emphasis 
on the danger of interfering with the 
constitutional rights of the slaveholders 
The year 1848, a sad one for Mr. Web 
ster, made him more than ever a dis- 
appointed man, weakened by politicaf 
resentment and private misfortune. tJ> 
break what was left of his spirit, a son 
and a daughter died within three daysf 
of each other. The orator, now sixty-^, 
six years old, wearied and shattered by(' 
intense efibrt crowded into short spaces. 1 
by disease, bereavement, and disappoint ^ 
ment, prepared his own burial-place at : 
Marshfield, with no more joy in life, and 
with one absorbing, trivial hope. Young , 
men who heard him speak could not un 
derstand his fame. Often he was pom. 
pons, heavy, empty, though once and 
again he would blaze up with the old> 



DANIEL WEBSTER 103 

ire and inspiration. He was in no 
condition to meet the changing times. 
To the Free Soil Party, afterward the 
Republicans, belonged the bold and con- 
quering stand J to the Whigs, the falter- 
ing and losing one. And Mr. Webster 
3tood with the Whigs. 

A candidate again in 1848, he re- 
3eived in the convention half as many 
v^otes as Scott, Taylor being nominated, 
with Clay second. In a speech at 
Marshfield Mr. Webster said that the 
nomination was not fit to be made, but 
that it was dictated by ^Hhe sagacious, 
wise, and far-seeing doctrine of availa- 
bility." A few years later he was to 
say at Buifalo, ^^ Gentlemen, I believe 
in party, I am a party man." Years 
learlier he had said of Washington: 
^^ His principle it was to act right, and 
to trust the people for support ; his prin- 
ciple it was not to follow the lead of 
sinister and selfish ends, nor to rely on 
the little arts of party delusion to obtain 
public sanction for such a course. Born 



104 DANIEL WEBSTER 

for his country and for the world, he die 
not give up to party what was meant foii 
mankind. The consequence is that hiji 
fame is as durable as his principles, s& 
lasting as truth and virtue themselves. 
While the hundreds whom i^arty excite- 
ment and temporary circumstances and 
casual combinations have raised into 
transient notoriety sink again, like thin 
bubbles bursting and dissolving into the 
great ocean, Washington's fame is likSj 
the rock which bounds that ocean, and 
at whose feet its billows are destined to 
break harmlessly forever. ... 

^' Among other admonitions, Wash- 
ington has left us, in his last communi- J 
cation to his country, an exhortations 
against the excesses of party spirit. A 
fire not to be quenched, he yet conjures J 
us not to fan and feed the flame. Un- 
doubtedly, gentlemen, it is the greatest 
danger of our system and of our time. 
Undoubtedly, if that system should be 
overthrown, it will be the work of ex- 
cessive party spirit." 



DANIEL WEBSTER 105 

[ In 1850 he took his final stand on 
slavery. As late as February 14 of that 
year he said, in a letter, that he be- 
uieved there was no real danger of the 
breaking-up of the government. A few 
months later he was using the danger of 
I disruption as the principal argument 
in support of Henry Clay's so-called 
compromise, which was no compromise 
at all, but an enormous victory for the 
^outh, throwing open thousands of miles 
to slavery, with no protection even for 
that part of the territory lying above 
Ihe line of the Missouri Compromise, 
and re-enacting and emphasizing the 
Fugitive Slave Law. On March 7 Mr. 
Webster made in the Senate the most 
famous of his later speeches, stirring up 
Tall of his dormant powers to plead the 
cause of the slaveholders. He dwelt 
upon the constitutional rights, which 
everybody knew, opposed the Wilmot 
Proviso on the plea that, as slave labor 
would not pay in the North-west, he 
would not ^'irritate" the South or 



106 DAOTEL WEBSTER 

^'needlessly take pains to reaffirm an 
ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact thei 
will of God.'' He brought all of his: 
logical acumen to a legal defence of thef' 
Fugitive Slave Law, and no other parti 
of his speech created such pain and in-j 
dignation in the J^orth. Mr. Webster's ' 
desertion did something to cover up the 
flames ; but they only burned the more i 
fiercely, for it was seen, by the unrelent- 
ing men who thought now with the 
Webster of 1820, that all hope of confin- 
ing slavery to its original area until the 
ISTorth had grown great and the South 
poor was gone, and that the crash might 
as well come when it would. 

Some of the effect of this speech may 
be indicated by its influence on the phi- 
losopher who had so coolly kept aloof 
from the controversy, ^a," said Emer- 
son, ''have lived all my life without ' 
suffering any inconvenience from Amer- 
can slavery. I never saw it, I never 
heard the whip. I never felt the check 
on my free speech and action until the 



DANIEL WEBSTER 107 

)ther day, when Mr. Webster, by his 
3ersonal iufluence, brought the Fugitive 
51ave Law on the country. I say Mr. 
yV^ebster ; for, though the bill was not 
lis, it is yet notorious that he was the 
ife and soul of it, that he gave it all he 
iad. It cost him his life ; and under the 
hadow of his great name inferior men 
heltered themselves, threw their ballots 
or it, and made the law. . . . Nobody 
loubts that Daniel Webster could make 
I. good speech. Nobody doubts that 
here were good and plausible things to 
^e said on the part of the South. But 
his is not a question of ingenuity, not a 
luestion of syllogisms, but of sides. How 
lame he there? . . . But the question 
fhich history will ask is broader. In 
he final hour, when he was forced by 
he peremptory necessity of the closing 
rmies to take a side, did he take the 
art of great principles, the side of 
umanity and justice, or the side of 
buse and oppression and chaos? . . . 
le did as immoral men usually do, — 



108 DANIEL WEBSTER 

made very low bows to the Christiaaj 
Church and went through all the Sun- 
day decorums, but, when allusion was 
made to the question of duty and the| 
sanctions of morality, he very frankly 
said, at Albany, 'some higher law,, 
something existing somewhere between 
here and the heaven, I do not know 
where.' And, if the reporters say true, 
this wretched atheism found some laugh- 
ter in the company. ' ' 

Seward called Mr. Webster a 'Hraitor- 
to the cause of freedom,'' Harriet Mar- 
tineau accused him of ''folly and treach- 
ery," and that gentlest of men, the poet 
Whittier, wrote : — 



Of all we loved and honored, naught 

Save power remains ,* 
A fallen angel's pride of thought, 

Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone. From those great eyes 

The soul has fled ; 
When faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 109 

Thirty years after, Whittier left an- 
bther picture, less sad and no less kind ; 
ind the change in him is so nearly par- 
allel to the changing judgment of the 
iv^orld that part of the poem may well 
;tand here, to lighten the impression of 
;hese last gloomy years. Thou 

Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
With eyes of power and Jove's own 
I brow, 

With all the warrior strength that fills 
Thy home horizon's granite hills. 
With rarest gifts of heart and head 
Prom manliest stock inherited, 
NTew England's stateliest type of man, 
tn port and speech Olympian ; 
IWliom no one met, at first, but took 
tA- second awed and wondering look 
(As turned, perchance, the eyes of 

Greece 

Z>n Phidias' unveiled masterpiece) 5 
Whose words, in simplest homespun clad. 
The Saxon strength of Csedmon's had. 

The mistaken statesman felt no secu- 
nty in his new position, no serenity or 



110 DANIEL WEBSTER 

pride of right. Always on the defen-i' 
sive, he became more and more unfair 
and caustic, more and more openlyj 
made that bid for Southern support 
which was to avail so little. He said in 
Boston itself, at the Eevere House, seven 
weeks after his great speech: ^^ Neither) 
you nor I shall see the legislation of the 
country proceed in the old harmonious^ 
way until the discussions in Congress 
and out of Congress upon the subject! 
shall be in some way suppressed. Take 
that home with you^ and take it as truth. 

^^ I shall support no agitations having, 
their foundation in unreal and ghastly 
abstractions.^' j' 

He said at Capon Springs, W. Ya.,, 
June 26, 1851: ^^ Gentlemen, this North i 
Mountain is high, the Blue Ridge higher 
still, the Alleghanies higher than either ',\ 
and yet this ^higher land' ranges fur-, 
ther than an eagle's flight above thej 
highest peaks of the Alleghanies. No ' 
common vision can discern it, no com- 



BANIEL WEBSTEE 111 

mon and unsophisticated conscience can 
feel it, the hearing of common men 
never learns its high behests ; and, there- 
fore, one would think it not a safe law 
to be acted upon in matters of the high- 
est practical moment. It is the code, 
however, of the Abolitionists of the 
North. . . . 

^'You of the South have as much 
right to secure your fugitive slaves as 
the North has to any of its rights and 
privileges of navigation and commerce.'' 

This great fall so occupied his last 
years that his other doings at the same 
period sink into insignificance in a sum- 
mary- story of his life. When Taylor died, 
(July 9, 1850), Mr. Webster became Sec- 
retary of State under Fillmore. During 
this second occupancy his only well- re- 
membered act was the correspondence 
with the Chevalier Hulsemann, in which 
Mr. Webster took the opportunity to 
tell Austria, and Europe in general, in 
a manner more aggressive than was 



112 DANIEL WEBSTER 

usual with him, that we were a great 
nation, and that we had the right to 
express sympathy with any struggle for 
republican government. In 1852 he 
was a candidate again, with more confi- 
dence than ever, since Clay had been 
put out of the race. On the first ballot 
Fillmore had 133, Scott 131, Mr. Web- 
ster 29 J and Scott was nominated on the 
fifty-second. Mr. Webster refused to 
support him, and requested his friends 
to vote the Democratic ticket, because — 
if we are to believe Peter Harvey, who, 
stupid as he is, was the chosen friend of 
the orator's last years and a reporter of 
the worst side of his great friend with 
dog-like admiration — because Franklin 
Pierce had always been formally friendly 
to Mr. Webster ! 

Disease had been doing its work : sor- 
row, bitterness, and mistrust had been 
doing theirs ; and, a fall from his car- 
riage hastening the end, the broken 
statesman died at Marshfield Oct. 24, 



DANIEL WEBSTEE 113 

1852. Eeligion had been a decorum in 
his life, not a force ; and he left for his 
own epitaph this : — 

^^^Lord, I believe: help thou mine 
unbelief.^ Philosophical argument, es- 
pecially that drawn from the vastuess 
of the universe in comparison with the 
apparent insignificance of this globe, 
has sometimes shaken my reason for the 
faith which is in me ; but my heart has 
always assured and reassured me that 
the gospel of Jesus Christ must be a 
Divine Eeality. The Sermon on the 
Mount cannot be a merely human pro- 
duction. This belief enters into the 
very depth of my conscience. The 
whole history of man proves it. 

^^ Daniel Webster.^' 

At his own request the orator's fu- 
neral was a quiet one, at Marshfield. 
Through all the changes of his nature, 
through plot and counterplot, he had 



114 DANIEL WEBSTER 

loved repose, the sky and the moun- 
tains, fresh air and grandeur ; and the 
last rites were in harmony with the 
nobler character of the man. Posterity 
has dealt firmly, but largely with him ; 
for a catastrophe that shook the founda- 
tions settled forever the place of Daniel 
Webster in our history. Because he 
was unable to stand patiently for the 
truth as he saw it in the lustre of his 
intellect and the health of his ambition, 
the world has justly called the great 
man weak. Because he spoke the sen- 
tences which, far above all others, be- 
came the watchwords of the North in 
the struggle for national integrity, his 
fame is high and sure in the story of 
America, not only as her greatest mas- 
ter of an eloquence which lighted up 
the deepest truths in her Constitution, 
but as the one of her sons whose power- 
ful statement of the nation's faith did 
most in time of peril to insure the 
nation's life. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

As has clearly been explained in the 
preface, there is no really great and final 
life of Webster; and it is therefore 
doubly necessary for any one who would 
study him carefully to get as many 
opposite points of view as possible. To 
read his siDceches and letters will do 
much. Some of the books in the follow- 
ing list are good, some bad. All may 
be suggestive. Various magazine arti- 
cles, easily found in Poole, and refer- 
ences in diaries, letters, essays, sermons, 
and newspapers of the time, will do 
more than any one existing book to 
furnish the material for a substantial 
judgment. 

I. A Memoir of the Life of Daniel 
Webster. By S. L. Knapp. (Boston, 
1831: Stimson & Clapp.) This is a 
brief and, of course, unfinished memoir. 
Another edition was published four years 
later, and the work was revised. 



116 BIBLIOGEAPHY 

II. Speeches and Foeensic Argu- 
ments OF Daniel Webster. (Boston, 
1835: Perkins, Marvin & Co.) Has 
most of his speeches np to that date. 

III. The Beauties of Daniel Web- 
ster. Selected and arranged^ with Essay 
on his Genius and Writings^ by James 
Eees. (New York, 1839 : J. & H. S. 
Langley. ) Also incomplete. 

IV. Reminiscences of Congress. A 
Biography of Daniel Webster. By Charles 
W. March. (New York, 1850 ; Baker 
& Son.) Another edition by Scribner, 
New York, 1852, under title of Daniel 
Webster and his Contemporaries. 

Y. Daniel Webster: Works. (Bos- 
ton, 1851 : Little & Brown. ) Contains 
a brief biographical memoir besides his 
works. 

YI. The Private Life of Daniel 
Webster. By Charles Lanman. (New 
York, 1852: Harper & Bros. ) 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 117 

VII. The Public and Private Life 
OF Daniel Webster, etc. By S. P. 
Lyman. (Philadelphia, 1852 : J. E. 
Potter & Co.) 

VIII. The American Statesman; or 
Illustrations of The Life and Character of 
Daniel Webster. By Joseph Banvard. 
(Boston, 1853 : Gould & Lincoln. ) 

IX. Life and Memorials of Daniel 
Webster. By S. P. Lyman. (New 
York, 1853 : D. Appleton & Co. ) These 
memorials were originally written for 
and printed in the New York Times. 

X. Daniel Webster: Life, Eulogy, 
AND Great Orations. (Eochester, 
1854: W. M. Hayward & Co.) The 
Life is by M. L. G. Clarke, the Eulogy 
by W. M. Hayward. 

XL Daniel Webster: Private Cor- 
respondence. Edited by Fletcher Web- 
ster. (Boston, 1857 : Little, Brown & 
Co.) 



118 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

XII. Daniel Webster: Etude Bio- 
GRAPHIQUE. (Bruxelles, 1858 : F. 
Claasseu.) This was at that time the 
only foreign Life of Webster. 

XIII. Life, Speeches, and Memorials 
OF Daniel Webster, etc. By S. M. 
Schmucker. (Philadelphia, 1867 : Qua- 
ker City Publishing House. ) 

XIV. Life of Daniel Webster. By 
George T. Curtis. (Xew York, 1870: 
D. Appleton & Co. ) 

XV. Reminiscences and Anecdotes 
OF Daniel Webster. By Peter Har- 
vey. (Boston, 1877 : Little, Brown & 
Co.) 

XVI. The Last Years of Daniel 
Webster. By George T. Curtis. (:N'ew 
York, 1878: D. Appleton & Co.) This 
contains also a poem by W. C. Wilkin- 
son, to which are attached a number of 
interesting notes. 



XVII. MEAPHY 119 

By C. H. Daniel Webster. 
Genealogiy England Historic- 
printed.) ,r, 1881: Privately 

XVIII. r 

Cabot Locbster. By Henry t 

Mifflin & n, 1883 : Houghton, I 

XIX. Da 

TrvE SpPter: Eepresenta- 
DoubledaisTew York, 1898: 
' ' Adams ^lure. ) Contains 
to Hayne^on'^ and ^^Eeply 



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The beacon BIOGRAPHIES. 

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE, Editor. 



The aim of this series is to furnish brief, readable, and 
authentic accounts of the lives of those Americans whose 
personalities have impressed themselves most deeply on the 
character and history of their country. On account of the 
length of the more formal lives, often running into large 
Tolumes, the average busy man and woman have not the 
time or hardly the inclination to acquaint themselves with 
American biography. In the present series everything that 
such a reader would ordinarily care to know is given by 
writers of special competence, who possess in full measure 
the best contemporary point of view. Each volume is 
equipped with a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important 
dates, and a brief bibliography for further reading. Finally, 
the volumes are printed in a form convenient for reading 
and for carrying handily in the pocket. 

The following volumes are the first issued : — 

PHILLIPS BROOKS, by the Editor. 

DAVID G. FARRAGUT, by James Barnes. 

ROBERT E. LEE, by W. P. Trent. 

JA_MES RUSSELL LOWELL, by Edward Everett 

Hale, Jr. 
DANIEL WEBSTER, by Norman Hapgood. 

The following are among those in preparation : — 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, by John Burroughs. 
EDWIN BOOTH, by Charles Townsend Copeland. 
AARON BURR, by Henry Childs Merwin. 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, by W. B. Shubrick 

Clymer. 
BENJAMIN FRANK.L1N, by Lindsay Swift. 



SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers, 
6 Beacon Street, Boston. 



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